Cyber attack rumour

[HTPostman]

Has anyone else heard rumours of another cyber attack? Been told by 2 line managers of this happening.

Tracking site is down, scanning those non prioritised tracked takes 2/3 minutes each one - we were told this morning not to scan as ready for delivery as it was taking too long. The PDA can’t download inflight and shows last update as being 30th Sept, so any P739 parcels the PDA is saying attempt 2nd delivery on 1st October!

Consumer collections were also not showing on the PDA this morning.

Oh dear oh dear.

[SMS1969]

Not at work today, but yesterday my PDA was very slow when scanning indoors. I got all my parcel collects on, but many didn’t have them on their gun.

[Simondavid]

I was just thinking an army of Cyber men would be useful for Christmas attacking the parcels!!

[HTPostman]

I was just thinking an army of Cyber men would be useful for Christmas attacking the parcels!!

Well they can’t blame strikes or COVID this time, cyber army it is!

[guardianangel]

This company is f----d, talking to a customer today and she was asking why Royal Mail have gone from the best most reliable delivery company to the worst in just a few years i replied shareholder greed and a management team of complete morons who couldnt run a bath and i was embarrassed to work for them,her reply was they are a disgrace,i nodded my head and carried on only prioritising my tracked and didnt deliver a single letter today,roll on xmas.

[theotherone]

Think it was planned:

RM Parcel, Event Processing System outage 06:00 - 16:00
From 6am today:
There will be a full outage of the EPS system, including Track & Trace and TES2.
All tracking services [T&T, TES2, IVR, RM Customer APP, Alexa, Tracking API etc] will not be available. A holding page for Track and Trace will be enabled
The entire tracking of parcels will not be available via any channel during the maintenance window.
There will be no consumer collections available during the change outage window
Customers will not be able to arrange booked collections
Pre-Advice and Scans data will be held during the change outage window and the Manifest Service will not be available
The latest tracking information will not be available
For dedicated parcel routes, the PDA generated Manifests will not be processed and therefore the information will not be available via track and trace. Notifications to customers will not be generated
There will be no in-flight options available. A holding page will be enabled
Customers will not be able to request delivery changes or change their delivery preferences
SMS and email notifications to customers will not be sent during the change outage window
No new events will be processed in EPS so notifications to customers will not be generated
International Customs payment will not be available. A holding page will be enabled
The screen that shows whether or not the custom charge has been paid will not be available. This will also meant that any outstanding custom charges cannot be paid
No data will be sent from EPS to any downstream system (e.g. ER, IPC, TDF, and SecAPI)
Inferred events will not be generated and sent to Enterprise Reporting
IPCs for certain International parcels will not be generated
The Tracking data File (TDF) will not be generated and sent to appropriate customers
The latest data for the Sortation Enrichment (SecAPI) to support parcel sortation at the North West Parcel Hub/Midlands Superhub will not be available.
Outage to EPS to ER feed (including pre-advice)
Push Notifications will not be sent
No new notifications will be sent to subscribed customers
Task Manager will not be available
Pre-Advice Validation messages will not be sent
No new messages will be sent to the Data Platform
PFW services are unaffected throughout this outage.
When is the next update?
Tuesday 3rd October at 16.00 unless the back out of the change is completed earlier.

[pinstripe]

Think it was planned:

Planned?
By whom. Only a smooth brained, half wit with monumental stupidity as their only redeeming feature would plan such an outage when the majority of the work is being done…….Ah, RM senior management. Forget what I said.

[BenacreNick]

However, in the face of adversity, RM staff still get the job done ✔.

Even when all else is failing around you.

Well done everyone , credit where credit is due

[crazyshrew]

Cyber attack??
Nah, just RMs IT team doing what they do best!

Whatever it was hit us yesterday: Monday 02 October
Spinning circle of doom appeared for 30-60 seconds after scanning everything in, draft routes had disappeared after going back in to add more or send to cloud, pop ups saying something along the lines of "blah blah blah computer says no" repeating themselves regardless of whether you hit 'continue' or 'retry'
Oh and parcel collect data info and some boxes not downloading.
And just for added funsies the PDAs were telling us the next delivery date was Monday. 02 October

In fairness this may not have been all due to IT nonsense, we're on the verge of another revision going live so I think the planner/manager etc, have already started to process of swapping some stuff around on the computer.

Cue a manager running round with a print out of booked collections trying to work out what addresses are where to tell us about our customer collections, and then afternoon phonecalls from another manager asking why collections didn't happen...yeah didn't get told about those ones

Monday was a great day

[Trumanity]

Think it was planned:

RM Parcel, Event Processing System outage 06:00 - 16:00
From 6am today:
There will be a full outage of the EPS system, including Track & Trace and TES2.
All tracking services [T&T, TES2, IVR, RM Customer APP, Alexa, Tracking API etc] will not be available. A holding page for Track and Trace will be enabled
The entire tracking of parcels will not be available via any channel during the maintenance window.
There will be no consumer collections available during the change outage window
Customers will not be able to arrange booked collections
Pre-Advice and Scans data will be held during the change outage window and the Manifest Service will not be available
The latest tracking information will not be available
For dedicated parcel routes, the PDA generated Manifests will not be processed and therefore the information will not be available via track and trace. Notifications to customers will not be generated
There will be no in-flight options available. A holding page will be enabled
Customers will not be able to request delivery changes or change their delivery preferences
SMS and email notifications to customers will not be sent during the change outage window
No new events will be processed in EPS so notifications to customers will not be generated
International Customs payment will not be available. A holding page will be enabled
The screen that shows whether or not the custom charge has been paid will not be available. This will also meant that any outstanding custom charges cannot be paid
No data will be sent from EPS to any downstream system (e.g. ER, IPC, TDF, and SecAPI)
Inferred events will not be generated and sent to Enterprise Reporting
IPCs for certain International parcels will not be generated
The Tracking data File (TDF) will not be generated and sent to appropriate customers
The latest data for the Sortation Enrichment (SecAPI) to support parcel sortation at the North West Parcel Hub/Midlands Superhub will not be available.
Outage to EPS to ER feed (including pre-advice)
Push Notifications will not be sent
No new notifications will be sent to subscribed customers
Task Manager will not be available
Pre-Advice Validation messages will not be sent
No new messages will be sent to the Data Platform
PFW services are unaffected throughout this outage.
When is the next update?
Tuesday 3rd October at 16.00 unless the back out of the change is completed earlier.

Computer says "No!"

[Nickvilla20]

Was told by my manager today I failed to scan in 12 tracked ready for delivery so this would explain why they got lost. According to the manager it was all my fault though.

[SpacePhoenix]

Wonder if this is linked to some staff not being able to login to the PDAs over the last few days

[BadPostman]

People still scan as ready for delivery? We stopped months ago

[ANDREW CROCOMBE]

Heard it was aliens who wanted to see how bad RM technology was- still laughing on their way back to Mars. You will scan to core.You will scan ready for delivery. You will be blamed. Billy Smarts Circus appearing near you very soon.

[goneaway]

Think it was planned:

RM Parcel, Event Processing System outage 06:00 - 16:00
From 6am today:
There will be a full outage of the EPS system, including Track & Trace and TES2.
All tracking services [T&T, TES2, IVR, RM Customer APP, Alexa, Tracking API etc] will not be available. A holding page for Track and Trace will be enabled
The entire tracking of parcels will not be available via any channel during the maintenance window... [truncated]

Why would this be planned? What self-respecting organisation would have planned maintenance happen during a weekday business day on such a scale? Anyone will know that planned maintenance generally only happens overnight or over a weekend (online banking, etc). This stinks of a cover up, possibly panicking a cyber attack has compromised data, so everything's been shut down to minimise the damage?

Customers are raging on Down Detector: https://downdetector.co.uk/status/royalmail/

Also, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RoyalMail/status/17 ... 3168733195 (see the comments)