Climate research centre compromised

One of the UK's leading climate change research centres has had a security breach.

The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) suffered a compromise of information, a UEA spokesperson said on Friday.

"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," said the spokesperson in a statement. "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," the spokesperson continued.

"We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry."

At the time of writing, the UAE spokesperson declined to comment further. It was unclear whether the breach was internal or external.

Professor Phil Jones, who is involved with climate research at the facility, was not available for comment at the time of writing.

Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley blogged on Friday that details of over 1000 emails and 3800 documents were leaked onto a Russian FTP server:

"A 61MB zip file containing information stolen from one of the world's leading climate research centres, was posted onto an anonymous FTP server in Russia, accompanied by a note saying:

'We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps'," wrote Cluley.