FYI........:o)
Thank God for The Register. How would the Secret Service do their job without them?
Never underestimate the stupidity of a rabid Obama supporter. By posting screenshots with the URL, he’s toast.
Anyone else remember Carnivore, the Clinton-era Internet spying device?
For once, let’s see if it works....
Memo to law enforcement investigators tracking down who broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account: Gabriel Ramuglia might be a good place to start.
The 25-year-old webmaster and entrepreneur is the operator of Ctunnel.com, the browsing proxy service used by the group that hacked into the vice presidential candidate’s personal email account and exposed its contents to the world. While he has yet to examine his logs, he says there’s a good chance they will lead to those responsible, thanks to some carelessness on their part.
“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,” he told El Reg in a phone interview. “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.”
Ramuglia got into the proxy business a few years ago, after schools began blocking access to an online game site he used to co-own. Pretty soon, people began using the proxy service to access YouTube, Gmail, MySpace, and dozens of other sites that are routinely blocked by IT departments.
To prevent abuse of the service - such as the occasional bomb threat or other illegal act that’s been known to happen - Ramuglia logs each user’s IP address, along with the time and web destination. That often isn’t enough to track down people who access extremely popular websites. But in this case, the perpetrators included a whole string of random-looking characters when posting screenshots of Palin’s hacked account. That will probably be enough for him to pinpoint the proverbial needle in the haystack.
The information at the moment is on a server at a Chicago colocation site owned by FDC Servers. Logs are automatically flushed after seven days, so the clock is ticking for law enforcement, who presumably are under intense pressure to protect the privacy of a candidate for the White House. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Ctunnel.com was only one of multiple anonymization services the email hackers used to cover their tracks, but there’s only one way to find out.
Ramuglia said if he is contacted by law enforcement officials he will probably give them the information they seek. At time of writing, he’s received no inquiries from any law enforcement agencies, he said.
The breach of Palin’s account “is pretty clearly against my terms of service,” he said. “As exciting as it is to be in the news, this is not the type of activity I can encourage by any means
Obama has even more supporters outside the USA. If the hacker is in another country is he/she untouchable by our laws?
Years ago in one of the popular newsgroups someone kept posting thousands of sporge posts ever day and so disrupted the group that is was nearly unusable. A group of hackers tracked down the sporger, who lived in Seattle, and posted his name, address,phone number and photo for millions of posters to see. I of course am not advocating anything of the sort for this scumbag(s)
If whoever did this, did it with only one anonymous redirection he was a complete and utter fool.
Doing it with multiple re directors that were within one international jurisdiction would be foolhardy.
Multiple international re directors leading to a public WiFi hub and using a recently flashed one time use MAC address would be my M.O.
In fact that’s how I always post to FreeRepublic. ;-)
I suspect this will lead nowhere but a second server in DerkaDerkastan.
They’ve got to look though. The world is full of half paranoid idiots. Perhaps this ‘Anonymous associate’ is sweating bullets as we post.
How about investigating that?
Whoever did this should be thrown in jail, and the key innocently thrown in the garbage.
I would be there is no huge effort to get to the bottom of this, I just don’t think it will happen, we have posted more information about the perp on this thread than the enforcement agencies will know in a week from now. I hope I’m wrong but the fact that the guy with the possible goods hasn’t be contacted probably means it’s not going to be really investigated that deeply.
I don’t think anyone would want to be in those kid’s shoes right now. I don’t think I’d want to be a friend, relative or employer of any of them either. Over-reaction by the Secret Service is almost universally accepted in this country and I’m sure they are going to send a “DON’T EVER SCREW WITH OUR PEOPLE AGAIN” message.
I have my popcorn ready, I’m waiting for the Shock And Awe show.