EXCLUSIVE: Google claims that Russian hackers are behind a new Brexit leak website

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.

On Wednesday, two of the leak’s victims revealed that they had been hacked and blamed the Russian government.

“I am completely aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account containing communications to and from me,” Dearlove added, referring to ProtonMail, a privacy-focused email provider.

Given “the backdrop of the current crisis in ties with Russia,” Dearlove, who oversaw Britain’s foreign intelligence organisation, known as MI6, from 1999 to 2004, told Reuters that the stolen material should be regarded with caution.

Tombs and his colleagues were “informed of this Russian disinformation based on unlawful 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 Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O)-owned firm known as “Cold River,” a Russia-based hacking outfit, according to Shane Huntley, who oversees Google’s Threat Analysis Group.

“Technical indications allow us to observe that,” Huntley added.

Huntley claimed that the entire operation had “obvious technical ties” between it all, from Cold River’s hacking attempts to publicising the disclosures.

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