The portals and applications of La Poste, the national postal service in France, have been the target of a cyberattack causing a serious disruption in package deliveries, as well as online banking transactions during the busiest days of the year.
La Poste reported in a statement that an incident caused by "Distributed Denial of Service" (DDoS) attacks made their online services practically inaccessible to customers and slowed down the delivery of letters and packages from early Monday. The financial services of La Banque Postale were also affected on Monday, as were the banks of the BPCE group, although operations were restored by midday.
The incident comes a week after a 22-year-old hacker, whose identity has not been disclosed, was arrested as the alleged perpetrator of another cyberattack targeting the Ministry of the Interior, which granted access to information from up to 16 million French citizens in numerous databases.
Interior Minister Laurent Núñez blamed his own department for "carelessness" in this incident and avoided any mention of the hybrid warfare launched by Moscow, as Danish authorities did last week after two cyberattacks were detected against the water supply and several internet portals in the lead-up to municipal and regional elections.
Several French private companies, such as the mobile operator SFR and the Leroy Merlin chain, have also reported being victims of cyberattacks in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the French counter-espionage agency is investigating another possible cyberattack targeting an international ferry company. A crew member, originally from Latvia, is in custody accused of acting "for an unidentified foreign power" in this latest case.