Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia¿s Climatic Research Unit, pictured, and published sensitive emails on the internet
Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published the files, including some personal messages, on the internet.
Among the most damaging is one which appears to suggest using a ‘trick’ to massage years of temperature data to ‘hide the decline’.
The CRU, which plays a leading role in compiling UN reports and tracks long-term
changes in temperature, has repeatedly refused to provide detailed information about the data underlying the temperature records.
It is thought that this could have triggered the theft. Climate change sceptics claim that some of the leaked messages discuss ways of manipulating data that fails to comply
with the establishment view that climate change is real and is being driven by man.
The email suggesting ‘hiding the decline’ is purported to be from Phil Jones, the unit’s
director.
He denied trying to mislead, telling the TGIF digital newspaper he had no idea what he
meant by the phrase.
‘That was an email from ten years ago,’ he said. ‘Can you remember the exact context of an email you wrote ten years ago?’
Another message has been interpreted as an attempt to control the publication of
research carried out by sceptical scientists.
One way of doing this would be by loading the panel of researchers who review papers ahead of publication with experts who are ‘on-message’.
Talk of a figure being ‘shoehorned’ into a report from the UN’s International Panel of
Climate Change appears in another of the documents.
Although the data was stored on the university’s computer system, the email exchanges also involve experts from other institutions around the world.
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said: ‘We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites.
‘Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of
this material is genuine.
‘This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.
‘We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the
police in this inquiry.’
The Met Office collaborates with the East Anglia unit on a variety of research projects,
including global temperature records.
Spokesman Dave Britton said the two organisations had to turn down numerous Freedom of Information requests because they did not hold the copyright to the data.
‘There is a feeling we are hiding something,’ he said. ‘But we are not, we just can’t
release the data.’
He said that is was unclear whether some of the documents had been tampered
with, adding: ‘We are not concerned about the robustness of the science we are pushing but we are worried about it being interpreted out of context.’
Three alleged members of the hacker gang Kryogeniks were hit with a federal conspiracy charge Thursday for a 2008 stunt that replaced Comcast's homepage with a shout-out to other hackers.
Prosecutors identified Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, and James Robert Black Jr., 20, as the hackers "EBK" and "Defiant" -- known for hijacking Comcast's domain name in May of last year.
The prank took down the cable giant's homepage and Web mail service for more than five hours and allegedly cost the company over $128,000.
Visitors to Comcast.net had been redirected to a simple page reading "KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."
A third man, Michael Paul Lebel, 28, was also charged with helping the duo, though his alleged handle "Slacker" was not credited in the defacement message.
As described in the indictment, the hackers got control of the domain with two phone calls, and an e-mail was sent to the company's domain registrar, Network Solutions, from a hacked Comcast e-mail account.
That gave them entry to the Network Solutions control panel for Comcast's 200 domains, according to the indictment.
In an interview the day after the attack, Defiant and EBK told Wired magazine's Threat Level that they didn't initially set out to redirect the site's traffic. Instead, they merely changed the contact information for the Comcast.net domain to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used a false address using crass language.
Then, the hackers said, they contacted Comcast's original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they'd done. It was only when the Comcast manager scoffed at their claim and hung up on them that EBK said it was decided to take the more drastic measure of redirecting the site's traffic to servers under the hackers' control.
"I was trying to say we shouldn't do this the whole damn time," Defiant said last year.
"But once we were in," added EBK, "it was, like, [expletive] it."
The indictment also says that the hackers phoned the Comcast official at home.
In the interview last year, the hackers expressed some shock about the attention the attack garnered.
"The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," said Defiant, who said he was 19 years old and his first name was James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad."
RELATED POSTS:-
- Search dogs detect something on Garrido property- May found bodies in the house property.
- Lab Technician Is Charged in Yale Grad Student's Killing - Believe as Workplace violence.
- Police in Yale killing stake out hotel room-watching hotel where person of interest Raymond Clark is staying in murder case Annie Le
- Suspects in Dugard case investigated in two more disappearances-9 and 13 year old girl.
- Police serve warrants in Yale grad student slaying-Cops searched the home of Yale lab tech Raymond Clark, who is a 'person of interest' murder case
- Annie Le body found in behind Yale Uni Lab wall - Missing 5 days before wedding - Found dead behind wall on wedding day.
- FBI, Police Raid New York Homes in Terror Probe
- Breaking News :-Police: Body found could be missing Yale student at wall in the basement
- Evangelist sentenced to 175 years for sex crimes
- DC sniper's execution met with grief, bitterness-Death by Lethal injection
- Terrifying moment crowd is engulfed by 20ft fireball at family festival after 'yob threw aerosol can into flames'
- Detecting glimpses of humanity in DC sniper-Is to Be Executed on Tuesday
- U.S. had al Qaeda intelligence on Fort Hood shooter-Fort Hood suspect was reportedly e-mailing al-Qaeda supporter
- A shoplifting mother... now England soccer captain's father is caught on film selling cocaine
- Fort Hood shooting suspect's ties to mosque investigated same mosque with 9 11 terrorists-Shouted Allah Akbar before gun rampage kill 13 wounds 31
- Executed in broad daylight: The chilling moment a Mafia hitman strikes outside a Naples bar... but no-one saw a thing
- Coroner says 6 women whose bodies were found at home died violently
- Richmond Police Make Sixth Arrest in Gang Rape-Friend of gang rape victim blasts school officials over safety
- Girl, 15, gang raped outside school dance while witnesses film horror attack
- Affidavit: Mom told deputies balloon saga was hoax
0 comments:
Post a Comment