Russia Accused Of Climategate Hack

The email data which allegedly undermines the scientific case for global warming could have been hacked and released by the Russian secret service in a bid to sabotage the climate change summit beginning today in Copenhagen, according to a UN scientist.

A file of private emails, which supposedly shows scientists faking data, dodging information requests and cheating in the peer-review process for scientific journals, was stolen from a leading climate study insitute and posted on the Internet last month. Now a leader of the UN’s climate change panel has suggested that the security breach may have been the work of Russian hackers-for-hire, who have worked for the Russian secret service in the past.

“It’s very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,” said Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (below), vice chair of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to reports in the Independent and elsewhere. “It’s a carefully made selection of emails and documents that’s not random. This is 13 years of data, and it’s not a job of amateurs.”

The Russian server, in Tomsk, where the files were posted could have been used by anyone in the world. but the Russian security service has been accused of involvement in cyber-crime in the past, most notably using “patriot hackers” in a denial-of-service attack against Georgia in 2008, and an earlier one against Estonia. Russian police were also accused of turning a blind eye to cyber-crime at the RSA conference in London last month.

The trail of servers holding the stolen emails also includes one in Saudi Arabia, according to Richard North, and many commentators claim the selection of material is more likely to suggest an insider released the material.

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, whose emails were stolen and published, is one of the main sources of climate data for the UN IPCC, on whose results the world programme for carbon reduction is based. The emails include messages where researchers appear to discuss ways to avoid Freedom of Information enquiries, and manipulate publication processes to exclude reports critical of the consensus on climate change.

The head of the unit, Dr Phil Jones, has stepped aside while the claims are investigated – his replacement, Professor Peter Liss, told eWEEK Europe that the unit’s work would continue.

The University has set up an inquiry to find whether the CRU scientists misbehaved, under senior civil servant Sir Muir Russell. The probe will “determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice,” and review the way the unit takes part in scientific peer review, as well as checking accusations that the unit obstructed Freedom of Information requests for its data, and looking into the unit’s security policies.

The head of the UN IPCC promised its own investigation, in an interivew with the BBC: “We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,” Rajendra Pachauri, who has chaired the IPCC since 2002 told the BBC’s Today programme.

The University of East Anglia has promised to publish all the raw data that the unit has based its work on for independent scrutiny, and climate change scientists have pointed out that other laboratories working indpendently have backed up the CRU’s findings.