The little that was revealed over on RealClimate indicated that the RealClimate server was invaded from a server in Turkey connected to Russia (I think I got that right) and the file with the hacked emails was posted on a Russian server.
Is it too obvious to think that Russia might have had something to do with this?
Here's what I think. And I'm probably wrong. But if I'm thinking, I'm still existing, right?
1. Russia, and probably in particular a few very wealthy petro-dollar Russians, have a lot to gain from continuing the oil flow to the West. They've used it to manipulate the Ukraine (actually on natural gas, but it's a related issue.) It's still one of Russia's main sources of income. If a climate change deal was inked in Copenhagen (even some progressive agreements), then they stand to start losing the energy income.
Pic: Oil rigs near Baku, Azerbaijan2. There are lots of hackers in Russia (many of them teenagers) writing viruses for profit. Think I'm kidding? Never encountered one? According to reports, some of the most insidious viruses are those that capture commercial correspondence (i.e., when you use your credit card for an Internet purchase), and send the information to Russian organized crime syndicates. Not that I enjoy quoting Fox News, but still: Cybercrime more widespread, skillful, dangerous than ever has this:
3. So add that up and you have motivation - derail the Copenhagen Express (well, maybe they were worried about it...) and method by doing something probably very simple, hacking into a research unit and stealing emails that shed a bad light on climate science. Recruit and pay the skilled Russian teenage hackers to crack the site and raid the server. Recruit and pay one or two unemployed (or just under-paid) and maybe a little disaffected Russian climate researchers to read through the emails and find the most incriminating ones, and compile them into a file. Publish your results and let the feeding frenzy begin. And while the climate treaty proceedings stall and the skeptical chorus howls at the moon in major Western countries (United States, England, Australia, etc.) keep watching your petrodollars flow in."We even have proof of actual job listings on Russian-language sites offering lucrative pay for coders who can create exploits and launch denial-of-service attacks. We've seen evidence of skilled hackers stealing corporate data on behalf of competitors. This isn't just about credit card and bank information. It has all the elements of traditional mafia-type crime," Melnick said.
Roger Thompson, a computer security pioneer who created the first Australian anti-virus company in the late 1980s, is convinced the secretive Russian mafia is masterminding the use of sophisticated rootkits in botnet-seeding Trojans.
"They are paying to recruit bright young hackers and using teenage kids around the world to move money around. They're into everything: spyware installations, denial-of-service shakedowns, you name it. It's the traditional mafia finding it easy to make money on the Internet," said Thompson, who now runs Exploit Prevention Labs in Atlanta.
One wonders, if I'm right, if the perps or their sponsors had an insight into the American political progress and realized how a couple of Senators from low-population, highly conservative states can unduly influence and stagnate proceedings in the Senate. Yes, I mean Senator Inhofe.
