Orbán rival says cyberattack behind database leak

Hungarian opposition leader and MEP Péter Magyar said on Monday that a “malicious” cyberattack was behind a “massive” leak of his party supporters’ personal data.

Magyar’s TISZA party is posing an unprecedented challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 15-year rule, leading in opinion polls ahead of elections expected in April 2026.

The leak was first reported by pro-government media over the weekend, which said the data of 200,000 TISZA mobile app users, including home addresses, had been uploaded online.

The party itself has decried a “massive” leak without giving further details. The database was only briefly available online before being removed.

“Based on the available information, this is not a data leak, but a malicious attack,” Magyar said in a Facebook video, accusing the “terrified” government of disclosing the personal data. He added that the party’s IT systems have been “under constant attack” for months.

“We have been able to repel most of these attacks, despite the fact that our security experts are facing international networks that have an interest in keeping the Orbán government in power,” he said.

A day earlier, Magyar accused Russia of orchestrating the attacks to keep Orbán, “their most important EU ally”, in power. Orbán has maintained close ties with the Kremlin despite its invasion of Ukraine.

The opposition leader alleged that the leak’s goal was to intimidate party supporters and stop TISZA’s upcoming internal primary, which was supposed to take place through the mobile app.

But he added that the vote would go ahead through a different website later this month.

The government said the “scandal” shows TISZA’s irresponsibility. “The way they are treating people’s data is how they would treat the country later,” Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, wrote on Facebook.

Online attacks have targeted critics of Orbán in the past. In 2021, Hungary’s first-ever opposition primary was suspended on day one after a cyberattack, which, according to organisers, came “most probably from abroad”.

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