Data leak: AfD attacked by hackers

The AfD has apparently become the target of a hacker attack. This was confirmed by a party spokesperson on Tuesday at the request of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. According to the spokesperson, a hacker attack on an AfD hosting service provider occurred in September of this year. The spokesperson reported that "parts of some mail inboxes were affected—most of which had not been used for years." The attack was quickly detected and stopped, and all users were informed accordingly. "The current mail inboxes of the AfD association were not affected," the spokesperson stated. According to the party's own information, the AfD checked 24 mail inboxes because there was "suspicion of a compromise." "Apparently, some data was stolen from ten of these inboxes," the spokesperson to the SZ reported. More than 400,000 emails are in question Since Monday, reports have been circulating on the platform X of more than 420,000 internal emails that may have been leaked. However, the exact content of the messages as well as the actual authors and senders cannot be deciphered or verified at this time. Bild-Zeitung and B.Z. had previously reported on this. According to SZ information, the leak is connected to a party-owned company of the AfD, Alternita Dienstleistungs-GmbH. The managing director is Hans-Holger Malcomeß. He is also the Federal Managing Director of the AfD. The leaked files were published on an anonymous website—but not in their original form, but as an index. The oldest emails in the leak were sent in 2013 according to the website's index, and the latest are from the summer of 2026. This digital list contains information about the individual leaked files, such as the supposed date of email sending and a brief summary of the alleged content. This database can also be searched by keywords. Due to this procedure, the content of the website cannot be immediately verified because the actual files must be downloaded separately. This type of publication is probably related to the size of the leak: the more than 400,000 emails and documents from the attachments have a volume of several hundred gigabytes. To determine whether the summaries published on the website are correct and whether the emails are real, the original files must be examined, which can take a considerable amount of time. Complications with mailboxes noticed weeks ago Some members of the party experienced complications with their email accounts some time ago. A functionary reported in an interview with the SZ: When he called the federal office a few weeks ago because he could not access his mail inboxes, it was said that the inboxes were under attack. Similar information is heard from the state association in Berlin: They recall that the inboxes were unavailable for a few days during the election campaign in September. It was assumed that the federal office would take care of it. Then, the state association heard nothing more about the matter. The party spokesperson did not provide any information about the exact extent of the data leak and possible contents. "The online publication of some of this data that has taken place is being examined," he stated. A first assessment can only be made after this examination. Editorial note: This text is the updated version of an earlier version.