A hacker claims to have infiltrated Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, extracting hundreds of thousands of emails. Now, the alleged attacker says, someone has offered €100,000 to make the leak disappear.

The hacker claims the operation exposed financial misconduct and hypocrisy inside a party that presents itself as a champion of ordinary Germans and built much of its appeal on anger at political elites.

The breach claims came up on a well-known hacker forum. In the post, the hacker is claiming to have exfiltrated more than 421,000 internal emails and over 100,000 files.

The data was allegedly extracted from more than 800 hosts associated with the party’s domain. It is distributed on the attackers' website via a torrent file weighing nearly 300GB.

The alleged haul includes the mailbox of Alexander Gauland, the AfD’s former co-leader, as well as internal databases and other party documents.

The party has confirmed a cyber incident to the German newspaper Bild.

"In September 2026, there was a hacking attack on a hosting provider used by our party," an AfD spokesperson said.

The party did not provide any information on the extent of the data theft.

The spokesperson claimed that the attack was quickly stopped and all affected users have been informed. The authenticity of the leaked emails remains unverified.

What AfD data was leaked?

The website shows AI-generated email summaries, sorted into categories such as racism and antisemitism, and graded from Low to Critical.

According to Cybernews researchers who examined the website, the sender and recipient emails, timestamps, and subjects are shown. The newest entry dates to September 12th this year, and the oldest goes back to 2013.

Hitler references, swastikas, and talk of violence

The email summary indicates hate speech. The leaked emails reportedly contain a disturbing collection of references to Nazism, antisemitism, racism, and political violence involving AfD members and staff.

Among the reported examples is a 2018 email forwarded by Alexander Gauland concerning a “Hitler-Wallfahrt,” or Hitler pilgrimage, allegedly involving a former judge at the AfD's Thuringia arbitration court.

In another case, a party member reportedly joked in a district WhatsApp group about turning refugees into handbags and boots, an apparent reference to the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps.

One district chairman reportedly resigned after a board member sent a Christmas card bearing a swastika and the words “Heil Hitler.” According to the account, the incident was laughed off by others.

Other messages allegedly reveal a more openly aggressive political culture. A Bavarian official reportedly urged party leaders to chant “Merkel verrecke,” roughly translated as “Merkel, croak,” every day.

In a separate email thread, federal party staff allegedly discussed luring a photographer to an event so that he could be removed by force. The exchange reportedly ended with the words “Heil und Sieg,” a phrase associated with Nazi slogans.

The material also includes a 2025 email from North Rhine-Westphalia titled “Sale of swastika flags and drugs at the info stand.”

Exposing “degeneracy and hypocrisy”

The hacker behind the breach reportedly told International Cyber Digest that the operation began with a single unpatched website belonging to the AfD. They claim they could have destroyed the shared server cluster and its backups, but chose not to.

The objective was to expose what they described as the party’s “degeneracy and hypocrisy.”

“The amount of financial misuse in these documents is appalling, regardless of what you think of immigrants,” the hacker told International Cyber Digest.

"The AFD takes a legitimate frustration and uses it to rob the poorest 20% of this country," attackers said.

“Hacktivism is often the only answer to populism of this magnitude.”

“We would pay you money to take the site offline”

The story took another turn when, according to International Cyber Digest, an anonymous user contacted the hacker through Proton Mail and offered money in exchange for taking the leak site offline.

“How can we get in touch? We would pay you money to take the site offline,” the message reportedly read.

The hacker told the publication that the offer amounted to €100,000. However, the hacker intends to keep the website online.