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Web proxy firm working with FBI to trace Palin e-mail hacker

Date: September 19, 2008
Source: COMPUTERWORLD


September 18, 2008 (Computerworld) The webmaster of a proxy service called Ctunnel.com, which may have been used by a hacker to illegally access the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, is working with law enforcement authorities to track down the person behind the break-in.

Gabriel Ramuglia, the Athens, Ga.-based webmaster of Ctunnel, said today that URLs in screenshots of Palin's e-mail -- photos were posted online yesterday on 4chan.org and other sites -- suggested that whoever accessed her Yahoo Mail account had used his proxy service.

Ramuglia said in an interview that he was contacted by FBI officials last night and asked to retain computer logs of the past few days' activity on his service and to make sure nothing is deleted. Ramuglia, who normally stores only a week's worth of log data, said he would not have deleted anything anyway because of the illegal nature of what had happened.

Rubico said it was harder to find the answer to one of the other questions needed for a password recovery: Where had Palin met her husband? After some digging, Rubico determined that the couple first met at Wasilla High School.

He said he used the information to reset Palin's password and go through her e-mail to see for anything incriminating that might "derail her campaign."

It was only after finding nothing that the hacker realized how easily he could be caught, since he had used only one proxy to access the account. So he decided to make access to it available to others on the /b/ board by posting Palin's recently reset password. Rubico claimed that he "then promptly deleted everything and unplugged my Internet and just sat there in a comatose state."

However, one of the other members of the bulletin board whom Rubico described as a "White knight f...," saw the thread and used the new password to go back into Palin's account and reset it. That person then sent an e-mail to a "friend of Palin's" informing her of the new password and what had happened, Rubico claimed.
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