Scottish secession supporters hacked for months

The “Yes Scotland” campaign for an independent Scotland shut down its computer network, amid claims that an unknown entity was still snooping around its emails after being detected, the Scotsman reports.

Earlier in the month, the group learned that confidential details in messages might have been exposed.

 “A private e-mail, which [it] said had been unlawfully accessed, showed it had paid an academic £100 for writing a newspaper article which set out the case for a Scottish constitution.”

The group took heat after the story was published in the Herald newspaper without a disclosure stating money had changed hands. The pro-Union campaign Better Together urged Scotland’s charity regulator to investigate what it described as the “lack of transparency” over the payment.

Yes Scotland dismissed claims by pro-Union figures that the hacking allegations were a “smokescreen” thrown up to distract from questions about its payment to Dr Bulmer.

The secessionist group’s chief executive, Blair Jenkins said: “The issue here is that the campaign for an independent Scotland is under attack from a force or forces unknown, clearly intent on causing as much disruption and damage to Yes Scotland and the movement as possible.”

He added: “As a result of this sustained criminal and sinister activity, Yes Scotland has been forced to shut down our entire internal online resource pending a comprehensive security audit of all our electronic systems. Make no mistake, what this amounts to is an attack on democracy.”

It is not believed that the names of individual donors were accessed.

The Scotsman reported that “although reports suggested yesterday that the alleged hacker used a foreign IP address, it is understood that this does not rule out the computer being based in the UK.”

Days later, the Sunday Times reported that the intrusions had been going on for months.

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