A cyberattack on the email hosting provider Alternita Dienstleistungs GmbH, which serves Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), exposed more than 345,000 unique email addresses and hundreds of thousands of confidential emails and attachments. The breach, first spotted on September 9, began with a compromise of a poorly protected WordPress site and allegedly gave the attackers persistent access to the provider’s servers, allowing them to exfiltrate over a terabyte of data. AfD said only a few email accounts were illegally copied but admitted a large amount of data was taken, resulting in an extensive data breach. The stolen emails were posted on an “activist website” that used rudimentary AI to generate keyword-based summaries, prompting claims of extremist content that the party disputes. Der Spiegel’s analysis of the raw files suggests party leader Alice Weidel may have known about illegal 2017 election donations weeks before she admitted it. 1