Why? Maybe just a bit of petty cash.
When word broke that 62 MBs of emails were hacked from the Climate Research Unit, the sheer amount of content (not to mention handpicking of select passages that were most incriminating) seemed to suggest that the hacking was more than just some average Joe hellbent on disproving climate change.
Now, the story gets more complex: fingers are pointing at Russia’s secret service.
A senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change says that Climategate was an advanced, politically motivated attack.
According to Daily Mail, the leaked emails were originally posted on a server at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business Tomsk, Siberia. Russia’s track record does not bode well in the wake of these allegations. From Daily Mail:
“Computer hackers in Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service (FSB) to shut websites which promote views disliked by Moscow….Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while using so-called ‘hacker patriots’ to shut down websites.”
Shaun Walker from the Independent cited similar information:
“The FSB security services, descendants of the KGB, are believed to invest significant resources in hackers, and the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices, deeming them “an expression of their position as citizens, and one worthy of respect”. The Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations, although the allegations were never proved.”
If FSB is truly behind Climategate, the obvious question is, Why?