The Royal Post say it suffers from a glitch in its ability to send packages or letters internationally, what says the BBC is due to a ‘cyber incident’. The carrier advises customers to “hold all export items” until the issue is resolved.
At this time, it is unclear whether the incident is an actual hacker attack or some other technical error. So says the National Cyber Security Center it is working with the Royal Mail “alongside the National Crime Agency, to fully understand the impact.” The BBC also says regulators have been made aware of the matter.
The downtime can be quite a disruption – according to the BBC, the carrier ships around 200,000 international parcels per day. Depending on how long it takes for the Royal Mail to restore its international export services, that could be a lot of parcels and letters piling up in the backlog. Anytime much of the infrastructure goes down there can be widespread consequences, as we recently saw in the US with an FAA software issue affecting thousands of flights.
