France’s postal and banking services disrupted by suspected DDoS attack

France’s national postal and banking services were knocked offline by a suspected distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Monday, according to an announcement by La Poste. The postal service called the attack “a major network incident” that was disrupting “all of our information systems.”

La Poste’s online mail and banking services, website, and mobile app are among the services that are temporarily unavailable, per a machine translation of the announcement, which said customers could still carry out banking and postal transactions in person.

The banking branch of the company La Banque Postale also published an announcement about the cyberattack, which was “temporarily making our customers’ access to their mobile app and online banking space unavailable.”

Despite claims made by a Russian hacktivist group, it’s not yet clear who is behind the cyberattack.

The cyberattack comes as the French government contends with a series of cybersecurity incidents of late, including remote control software found planted on a passenger ferry.

Last week, the French Interior Ministry disclosed a data breach in which hackers broke into email accounts and stole confidential documents, including criminal records. Shortly after, local authorities announced the arrest of a suspect, a 22-year-old whose name was not divulged. 

It’s not clear if any of the incidents are linked.