Information Security & US & Life & Love & Fashion & Hacking & Passion

A group of computer hackers said yesterday that they had accessed a Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, publishing some of her private communications to expose what appeared to be her use of a personal account for government business

The hackers posted what they said were personal photos, the contents of several messages, the subject lines of dozens of e-mails and Palin's e-mail contact list on a site called Wikileaks.org. That site said it received the electronic files from a group identifying itself only as "Anonymous."

"At around midnight last night some members affiliated with the group gained access to governor Palin's email account, 'gov.palin@yahoo.com' and handed over the contents to the government sunshine site Wikileaks.org," said a message on the site.

Rick Davis, the campaign manager for Republican presidential nominee John McCain, issued a statement yesterday afternoon condemning the incident.

"This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law," he said. "The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them. We will have no further comment."

The episode focuses attention on Palin's use of her personal e-mail account as lawmakers in Alaska look into whether she fired the state's public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, because he refused to take action against her brother-in-law, a state trooper at the time.

Palin has been criticized in recent days for using a personal e-mail account to conduct state business. An Alaska activist has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking disclosure of e-mails from another Yahoo account Palin used, gov.sarah@yahoo.com.

That account appears to have been linked to the one that was hacked.

Both accounts appear to have been deactivated. E-mails sent to them yesterday were returned as undeliverable.

Andrée McLeod, who filed the FOIA request, said yesterday evening that Palin should have known better than to conduct state business using an unsecured e-mail account.

"If this woman is so careless as to conduct state business on a private e-mail account that has been hacked into, what in the world is she going to do when she has access to information that is vital to our national security interests?" she asked.

McLeod's Anchorage attorney, Donald C. Mitchell, said Palin declined to comply with a public records request in June to divulge 1,100 e-mails sent to and from her personal accounts, citing executive privilege.

The Fed's extraordinary series of efforts to pump extra funds into the financial system and bail out such firms as American International Group and Bear Stearns with mammoth loans has depleted its store of Treasury bonds. The central bank will use the funds to offset the amount of money it has injected into the markets in its rescue efforts.

"By over-funding itself and placing those funds at the Fed, the Treasury is expanding the Fed's balance sheet in a way that will give the Fed the ability to conduct further operations to support the financial market functioning, should the need arise," said Michael Feroli, an economist with J.P. Morgan Chase.

The department is raising the $40 billion by auctioning bills, known as Treasurys.

Central banks around the world are taking dramatic actions to contain the crisis in the credit markets, pumping more than $280 billion this week into the financial markets, including $70 billion from the Federal Reserve.

Many banks are now charging very high rates to lend to each other, and some institutions have closed their windows altogether -- a sign of how tight borrowing has become. The benchmark overnight lending rate for these banks, called the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, nearly doubled to 6.4 percent, the highest jump on record.

The loss of confidence in the credit markets pushed interest rates on Treasuries lower as investors looked for safe places for their money. This happens because the more investors demand Treasuries, the lower the rates sink. Rates on the three-month Treasury bill, for instance, fell at one point this morning to 0.23 percent, the lowest since at least the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Russia halted trading on its two stock exchanges and injected billions into three former state-owned banks as questions were raised about whether these institutions would remain viable. These banks had accepted a wide range of collateral for loans, including stocks that have fallen more than 50 percent over the past several months.