Attack on email hosting provider for German far right party AfD exposed 345k accounts

The cyberattack on Alternative for Germany (AfD), the country’s most prominent far-right political party, exposed hundreds of thousands of confidential emails and attachments, as well as more than 345,000 unique email addresses.

Have I Been Pwned confirmed the scale of the breach for the first time today, after AfD officially disclosed the September attack on its hosting provider last week.

AfD said in its statement that “only a few email accounts were illegally copied,” but admitted a large amount of the data was taken from them, resulting in an extensive data breach.

The emails were added to what the party described as “an activist website,” which summarised the email chains into searchable topics and has led to the publication of various revelations, such as a party co-leader’s opinions on colleagues’ “deeply problematic” racial discourse.

Per a report from investigative journalist Lilith Wittmann, citing conversations with the cybercriminals responsible for the hack-and-leak job and party sources, the attack was first spotted …