'Anonymous' targets German far right with Nazi-leaks.net

Hackers have targeted Germany's far-right with a Wikileaks-style website.

The launch of nazi-leaks.net follows the start of Operation Blitzkrieg, a campaign against neo-nazi and other far-right sites attributed to Anonymous.

The site includes a list of individuals the hacker group alleges are donors to the National Democratic Party (NPD).

The NPD are reported to be considering legal action against the site.

Anonymous is a loose-knit gathering of hackers best known for attacks launched in 2010 against companies such as Mastercard, Visa and Paypal in response to their withdrawal of services from Wikileaks.

A statement purporting to be from Anonymous announced the launch of Operation Blitzkrieg.

"We hereby call to you to identify sites where the nazis gather... collect the data and co-ordinate attacks," it said.

The nazi-leaks.net data, the authenticity of which has not so far been verified, also included some NPD emails, customer lists from far-right stores, as well as contact information from a weekly paper.

Some of the data had already been published online, German media reports suggest.

The leak has been criticised by some involved in fighting the far-right, citing privacy concerns.

Simone Rafael from the anti-Nazi web forum netz-gegen-nazis.de told the BBC: "The intention is a good one but I think this is the wrong way to act.

"Putting the addresses and names of people onto the internet is the wrong way to do this.

"This is a lot of data, but there are already some names where it's clear the people are not right-wing extremists."

Some people identified in the data had merely been contacted by right-wing publications seeking interviews, she added.

After the news broke, nazi-leaks.net became inaccessible, possibly because of the high volume of traffic it was experiencing.

However, the information has been mirrored on other websites, including the Anonops communications blog.