AfD Investigates Online Archive After September Cyberattack

Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is investigating the online publication of material allegedly copied during a September cyberattack on a hosting provider used by the party. The AfD said attackers unlawfully copied data from a small number of mailboxes, most of which had reportedly been inactive for years. An anonymous online archive claimed to contain 421,179 emails totaling 281 gigabytes. The AfD has not confirmed those figures or authenticated the files. The archive’s operators also claimed to offer email summaries, but the underlying material and summaries have not been independently verified. The party said it is reviewing what appeared online and has announced no timetable for completing that work. It said affected account holders and its data protection officer were notified, and that the breach and online publication were reported to security authorities. The AfD also said the attack was detected and stopped quickly. That account does not establish whether all copied data was recovered or whether further information was exposed. The party said the attack targeted an external hosting provider in September and that parts of a few email inboxes were copied...