Cyberattack paralyzes La Poste in the middle of the Christmas season

Just Christmas days away, France faced an incident that not only damages logistics, but also the experience and trust of millions of people and companies: an alleged cyberattack has interrupted the online services of the national postal operator, La Poste, and its banking arm La Banque Postale, complicating the delivery of packages, access to digital banking and the management of transactions right at the time of greatest demand of the year.

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The incident comes in a context of increased cyber activity in the country, with recent attacks also aimed at government entities, raising critical questions about the resilience of essential services in the face of increasingly frequent and opportunistic threats.

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_{What services were affected}

According to La Poste itself, the service was affected by a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, which saturated its digital platforms and made web pages and mobile applications inaccessible. This has slowed down or interrupted:

• Access to parcel services such as Colissimo
• Tracking shipments and deliveries of letters and packages
• The use of online banking at La Banque Postale
• The approval of digital payments and regular transfers.

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Although the company assures that customer data has not been compromised, the interruption directly impacts the ability to send and collect gifts, and to manage payments during the Christmas period.

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_{The impact on logistics and customer experience}

The choice of timing couldn't be more critical: a few days before Christmas, millions of packages and letters with gifts or congratulations compete to arrive at their destinations on time. Queues at post offices decorated for holidays reflect the frustration of customers whose access to digital services is blocked, forcing employees to manage processes manually or with alternative tools.

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In addition, users of digital banking linked to La Poste have had their online access limited, with the bank temporarily redirecting some approvals to SMS authentication systems while the affected systems are being restored.

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_{Who could be behind it and why now?}

As of today, no official responsibility has been attributed to the attack, but authorities and analysts point to three possibilities:

• Opportunistic attacks by criminal groups that seek to interrupt systems under high traffic loads
• Actors with geopolitical motivations, given the recent increase in incidents aimed at institutions in France
• Disgruntled or sabotaging internal users, who exploit vulnerabilities to cause chaos

The context includes other recent incidents such as the one directed at the French Ministry of the Interior, which compromised sensitive files in previous days, and which could be related to an increase in hostile activity in the region.

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_{Key Lessons for Critical Services}

This incident highlights several issues that every organization must consider:

• The importance of DDoS resilience: essential services must have specific defenses to mitigate saturation attacks.
• Contingency planning in periods of high demand: when systems are most critical, response plans must be tested and ready.
• Access monitoring and abnormal traffic: early detection can minimize the impact.
• Clear communication with users: Keeping customers informed helps reduce frustration and confusion.

Even when customer data isn't compromised, service interruption can erode trust and result in economic and operational losses.

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_{Protect your critical services from interruptions}

Attacks such as the one affecting the French postal service remind us that not only is data valuable — availability and operational continuity are valuable, too. Opportunistic cyberattacks and DDoS remain a real threat to any organization with public or high-traffic digital services.

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In Apolo Cybersecurity we help you strengthen the resilience of your systems against DDoS attacks, designing specific defenses that guarantee the continuity of your services. We define and test incident response plans so that your organization knows how to act at critical moments, and we monitor traffic and access in real time to detect and contain threats before they impact your operations.