Posted on 09/17/2008 8:34:16 PM PDT by Islander7
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Thanks. Whoever did this to the Palin’s needs to have their butt handed to them.
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.
Whoever did this needs to be introduced to Todd Palin in some dark alley.
I think the FBI has become very good at cracking cyber-crimes. They catch quite a few pedophiles and wanna-be terrorists by monitoring and tracking online activity. The Secret Service will also be on top of this, Lord only knows how many times they’ve had to track down threats to the President that some loser made online. I just hope that when the offender is caught, film crews are there so we can all watch the ‘perp walk’ and get a glimpse of this idiot. Anyway, Bill O’Reilly pledged that he was going to personally call the DOJ and see if this is being investigated. LOL, go Bill!! I guess we have to watch ‘The Factor’ tomorrow night to see what he found out.
Yep, braindead move.
Even daddy won’t be able to get him out of this one, IF it is him.
“By posting screenshots with the URL, he’s toast.”
Explain.
Anyone else remember Carnivore, the Clinton-era Internet spying device?
For once, let’s see if it works....
Funny stuff. The Feds might be at his house within 24 hours.
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
Please. We don’t need anyone on FR creaming a poor guy who may not even be involved.
I clearly did not do that. I just wanted to give it out in full light. You might delete it, yet it clearly shows he doesn’t condone this, and didn’t police it.
Remember “Watergate”?
Wonder if Congress and the media will treat this as a possible O’Bummergate?
Right.
We just want to share in the lulz
I hope they catch these hackers, but they may have gone back and forth through many of these anonymous servers to cover their tracks. I’ll bet they didn’t go through just one.
dear rubico10:
EPIC FAIL
Obama has even more supporters outside the USA. If the hacker is in another country is he/she untouchable by our laws?
We have to be careful with that sort of thing. Innocent people can get crushed.
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)
This is WATERGATE for the DEMOCRATS.
Do not let the issue die.
Do not let the media distract you about what Palin was using her account for.
This was democratic opposition research into the private life of Palin. If someone had broken into her home, looking for printouts of these same emails, it would be a 50 state manhunt.
This was probably illegal, and definitely unethical.
WATERGATE for the DEMOCRATS.
Shameful what the dems and the media are doing.
I understand, I was just giving our dial-up FReepers a break.
It's good that he's willing to cooperate and produce the log files. But it's surprising that he hasn't been contacted by the authorities yet.
“This is WATERGATE for the DEMOCRATS”
Never thought of that but you are 100% right!
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.
It will move around I'm sure.
The democrats were doing the same thing that happened during WATERGATE. Instead of physically going through filing cabinets, they were going through electronic cabinets.
This is a HUGE issue. Do not let the media or the democrats distract us.
If this had happened to Obama, every media outlet would be screaming for a special prosecutor. And they would be blaming McCain or Rove.
It is the modern day WATERGATE.
Pretty much, yes. Usually anyway. Depends on the country. But this idiot is homegrown. A product of the public school system no doubt.
CARNIVORE! I remember. Wasn’t that long ago, but it seems like it.
When Palin is in there, she is going to clean up the slime big time.
I am hoping for a sea of Yellow Jump suites.
Explain.
By posting the URL, the time and date of the offense, the owner of that site can track down who was using the services of ctunnel to get to yahoo and other associated places at that time.
If he didn't do a few more steps to anonymize his internet prescence (like using it from school/work/home) he's DOOMED because the SS and the FBI have the manpower to track down every address as needed.
Didn't sound like he was creaming them at all. That one proxy admin will be a Godsend to the investigators. Better hurry up though. Proxy information and logs have a lifespan and a half life. The more time between the investigation and the review of the logs the harder it gets to get the information.
Oh, my!
Where would America be without O’Reilly watching out for Palin?
Does he really think this is not going to be pursued?
What an ego.
How about investigating that?
That’s because she’s a fem-nazi.
Whoever did this should be thrown in jail, and the key innocently thrown in the garbage.
I'll bet that the Obama illegal meddling in the diplomatic process in Iraq is very likely to go unpursued, as well as his alledged false birth certificate, and I could go on for a while about events that are left unpursued by this current administration. BOR is very likely completely right that this will be unpursued.
Concur.
Reading logs on a system with any significant traffic is like drinking from a fire hose.
I have clusters of systems that put out half a gig of PERFORMANCE data per day.
To expect anyone to know the details of such a flood of data is simply ludicrous.
PS- did you see my post with the aside about the Yahoo server farm in it? You’d probably enjoy the gory details.
Dialup?
Jeez. I forget that people still do that.
My soon-to-be-ex-wife and I once had a cockatiel that did a spot-on imitation of a 9600 baud modem handshake.
Weirdest thing I’ve ever heard a bird mimic.
One word. Backups.
So you do not think it is significant that the FBI and the Secret Service are already investigating this?
I have a feeling someone’s going to get a visit from Agent Frownyface and his good friend Sidearm.
The Bush administration has ignored so much that should have been prosecuted, that I have come to expect very little from it in terms of executing the laws of the USA. Whether or not I believe that a FBI/ Secret Service investigation is significant is really irrelevant; what matters is whether anyone gets prosecuted. I really hope that that happens, but I am not expecting much.
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