Palin Email Hackers May Have Left "Prints"

Sam Gustin writes: The U.S. Secret Service and F.B.I. have set out to identify who hacked into G.O.P. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account and published screen-shots of her messages and family pictures. The answers may lie on a Web server in Chicago.

As it turns out, the hackers who broke into Palin's account may have left digital fingerprints.

The culprits apparently used a proxy browsing service called Ctunnel.com to access Palin's account. Ctunnel.com allows users to route their browser requests through its servers and thus protect their anonymity.

Ctunnel founder Gabriel Ramuglia told The Register last night that he may have the IP addresses of those responsible for the Palin email hack, the U.K.-based tech news site reported.

"Usually, this sort of thing would be hard to track down because it's Yahoo email, and a lot of people use my service for that," Ramuglia said. "Since they were dumb enough to post a full screenshot that showed most of the [Ctunnel.com] URL, I should be able to find that in my log."

The McCain campaign expressed outrage at the hack, which apparently conducted by members of the Anonymous cyber-mischief group, which has famously targeted the Church of Scientology.

"This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law," said Rick Davis, McCain's capaign manager. "The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them."

The exposure of Palin's emails came as the vice-presidential candidate faced criticism over her use of private email accounts for public business.

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