Liberal admits Social Democrat computer hack

An employee of the Young Liberals has admitted accessing the Social Democrats' computer system without authorization over a three month period earlier this year.

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On Sunday evening Sweden's Social Democratic Party reported hundreds of incidents of unauthorized computer access to the police, alleging that "someone linked to the Liberal Party" had hacked into an internal network.

Then on Monday morning a 24 year old employee of the Young Liberals Association admitted that he had acquired a local ombudsman's details for logging in to the Social Democrats computer network over the internet.

The 24 year old has now been dismissed from his post, wrote the Liberal Party in a press statement.

The technical investigation is still not completed, but the scale of the unauthorized activities will soon be made clear.

"What the Liberal youth worker has done was misjudged and contrary to the Liberal Party's ethical guidelines. The legal process will determine whether what he has done is also criminal," said the Liberals' party secretary Johan Jakobsson.

He added that the 24 year old has apologised for his actions.

"He regrets this enormously and wants to say sorry to the Social Democrats and the Liberals," said Johnsson, who denied that the party used information from the unauthorized access to plan their campaign activities.

The 24 year old claims that he stopped using the log in details in March, because it was playing on his conscience, according to a press release. He said that he had acted on his own initiative and that only he had had access to the log in details.

But the Social Democrats' treasurer Tommy Ohlström stated at an overnight press conference that the latest access happened only last week.

The 24 year old was said to be able to see secret information about Social Democrat strategies, plans for the election campaign and information from the security police.

"Our computer systems have been illegally accessed. It was widescale, systematic and has been going on for a long time," said party treasurer Tommy Ohlström, at an overnight press conference.

Johan Jakobsson said he had no idea what the political consequences could be.

"First and foremost, we're focused on establishing all the facts."

The Social Democrats' treasurer Tommy Ohlström stated that between January and March of this year, the party's computer systems were illegally accessed 78 times. An investigation by IT firm Sentor revealed information about which computer, or computers, had acccessed the Social Democrat systems.

Similar spying attempts have happened on "countless" occasions since December last year. But the computers used in those cases is less clear, according to Ohlström.

"But the last incident was last week," he said.

Percy Bratt, the party's legal representative, confirmed that the matter was reported to the police on Sunday evening.

"There is clear legal ground for a police report for unauthorized access to computer systems, which can carry a punsihment of up to two years," he said.