281GB of Internal Emails Leaked from Germany's Far-Right Party AfD

The German far-right party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) has confirmed that a hosting provider was breached and that part of the party's mailboxes was copied. The leaked data is said to total 281GB, and the published corpus is reported to include 421,179 internal emails and more than 100,000 files.

Rather than posting the raw leaked data in full on the site, the site run by the alleged hackers displays AI-generated summaries and category labels (such as racism and anti-Semitism, rated from Low to Critical), while the complete original data, headers, and attachments are made available for download via BitTorrent. Local reports and party officials have stated that the AI summaries contain errors.

Some reports have suggested the intrusion may have occurred via an unpatched website, but independent verification has not yet been provided. The hackers claim the leak’s purpose is "to expose the party's corruption and hypocrisy," and it has also been reported that there were monetary offers from people demanding the site be taken down. From a security perspective, the incident has highlighted issues such as sensitive information remaining in long-unused email accounts, shared infrastructure that is not properly separated, and vulnerabilities in abandoned sites.

Media outlets warn of malware risks when directly downloading the leaked data and of legal issues related to handling stolen personal information. The AfD has acknowledged the breach and begun an investigation, but full technical details and the complete scope of the impact will have to await further reports.