According to a Google cybersecurity official and the former chief of UK foreign intelligence, a new website that released hacked emails from numerous key proponents of Britain’s secession from the European Union is linked to Russian hackers.
Private emails from former British spymaster Richard Dearlove, leading Brexit campaigner Gisela Stuart, pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs, and other supporters of Britain’s divorce from the EU, which was finalized in January 2020, have been published, according to the website “Very English Coop d’Etat.”
According to the website, they are part of a gang of hardcore pro-Brexit leaders in the UK who are covertly in charge.
The veracity of the emails could not be verified immediately by Reuters, but two victims of the leak claimed on Wednesday that they had been targeted by hackers and blamed the Russian government.
“I am well aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account which contained emails to and from me,” said Dearlove, referring to the privacy-focused email service ProtonMail.
Given “the context of the current crisis in ties with Russia,” Dearlove, who oversaw Britain’s foreign intelligence organization, known as MI6, from 1999 to 2004, told Reuters that the stolen material should be regarded with caution.
Tombs and his colleagues were “aware of this Russian disinformation based on illegal hacking,” he wrote in an email. He remained silent on the subject. Stuart, who chaired the Leave campaign in the United Kingdom in 2016, did not respond to emails.
The “English Coop” website was linked to what the Alphabet Inc-owned business known as “Cold River,” a Russia-based hacking outfit, according to Shane Huntley, who runs Google’s Threat Analysis Group.
“We’re able to see that through technical indicators,” Huntley said.
Huntley claimed that the entire operation had “clear technical links” between it all, from Cold River’s hacking attempts to publicizing the disclosures.
Russian embassies in London and Washington did not respond to requests for comment via email.
The Foreign Office of the United Kingdom, which handles MI6’s media inquiries, declined to comment. Other Brexit supporters whose emails were suspected of being shared on the website did not respond to emails sent to them.
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