According to Infosecurity Magazine, the French postal service, La Poste, is still offline days after a major DDoS attack hit its systems on Monday. The main website, laposte.fr, remained inaccessible as of Wednesday morning, along with La Banque Postale’s online and mobile services, the La Poste app, and its digital identity service. The attack has had an unusual physical impact, with reports of customers being turned away from post offices in Paris. Security expert John Carberry of Xcape noted the attack was “timed perfectly” to cause maximum disruption during the busy holiday period. So far, no threat group has come forward to claim responsibility for the incident.
When Cyber Attacks Get Physical
Here’s the thing that makes this attack stand out: it bled into the real world. Most DDoS attacks are a digital nuisance—a website goes down for a bit. But this one reportedly stopped people from doing their postal and banking business at physical counters. That’s a significant escalation. It shows how deeply integrated La Poste’s digital and physical operations are. Cripple the network, and suddenly the whole machine grinds to a halt, not just the website. For millions of French citizens and businesses relying on this service for parcels, payments, and official mail right before the holidays, the timing couldn’t be worse. It’s a stark reminder that in our connected world, a cyber attack is rarely just a “tech problem.”
The Motive Mystery
No one has taken credit. And that, according to the expert cited, is perhaps the most telling clue. Carberry suggests the lack of a claim points to a state-sponsored test or a hacktivist operation aiming to stress national infrastructure, rather than a criminal group looking for a ransom. Think about it: if you’re after money, you usually make a demand. Staying silent while you cripple a national postal service? That feels more like sending a message or probing defenses. This attack also follows closely on the heels of that data theft from the French Interior Ministry. Is it a coordinated campaign? It’s too early to say for sure, but the pattern is certainly raising alarms. The goal might simply be to demonstrate vulnerability and erode public trust.
The Inevitability of Disruption
The key takeaway for any large organization, especially in critical infrastructure, is that you have to plan for this. Disruption isn’t a maybe; it’s a when. Carberry’s advice hits the nail on the head: you need diversified infrastructure, pre-arranged DDoS mitigation on standby, and clear, workable offline fallback procedures. Basically, you need a plan for when the screens go black. For an operation as vast as La Poste, having some services like ATM withdrawals still work is a minor victory, but it’s not enough. The core service—moving mail and parcels—was compromised. This incident should be a case study for any major logistics or service provider. Your resilience isn’t measured when everything is working. It’s measured on the Wednesday morning when nothing is.
