Speculation has emerged that suggests a link between the recent hacking of a server at England’s East Anglia Univeristy and Russian Secret Service, the Times Online reported today. “So-called ‘patriot hackers’ from Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service, the FSB, to attack websites disliked by the Kremlin, such as the “denial of service” campaign launched against the Kavkaz-Tsentr website, over its reports about the war in Chechnya, in 2002,” the report reads.

In another excerpt, further speculation asserts how carbon offsets and other proposed methods of cutting back on green house gases may have been what spurred Russian opposition:

Russia, a major oil exporter, may be trying to undermine calls to reduce carbon emissions ahead of the Copenhagen summit on global warming. The CRU emails included remarks which some claim show scientists had manipulated the figures to make them fit the theory that humans are causing global warming.

Vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Jean-Pascal van Ypersele told the press that “he believed the theft of the emails was not the work of amateur climate sceptics,” lending further credence to the notion that an outside group may have been hired to complete the job. In the days following the initial appearance of emails and other data stolen from East Anglia’s servers on various websites, speculation that the release had actually been an “inside job” was issued by various reporters and members of the blogsphere. However, information has been released that shows the data first appeared on a small server based out of the city of Tomsk in Siberia.

One unnamed hacking “specialist” commented to the Times pertaining to Russian involvement:

There is no hard evidence that the hacking was done from Tomsk, though it might have been. There has been speculation the hackers were Russian. It appears to have been a sophisticated and well-run operation, that had a political motive given the timing in relation to Copenhagen.

Speculation as to who was behind the activity will no doubt continue, for months at very least, perhaps for years to come. The activity was obviously politically driven, but the motives for such actions are so many and varied that ruling out one potential source is complicated, and will take time. In the more immediate sense, how will this sort of information effect the outcome of the upcoming conference at Copenhagen?