State Representative Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, made a statement to the Tennessean in which he identified his son, David Kernell, as the hacker who broke in to vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email address and posted screenshots of the contents on the internet.

Mike Kernell represents District 93, which covers the University of Memphis, and parts of south-east Memphis. He told the Tennessean on Thursday that it was indeed his son David who, using the handle Rubico, posted the original screenshots of Governor Palin’s e-mail account after using Yahoo’s password recovery service and a bit of research to find out personal details about Palin and subsequently gain control of her password. The father refused to make any further comment, especially on the whereabouts of his son.

David Kernell, aged 20, is a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Using the handle Rubico, he made a post on the 4chan.org forums, in which he alleges that he is the one who is responsible for leaking Governor Palin’s e-mail inbox details online, and goes on to provide a believable account of how he did it.

Nevertheless, authorities are pursuing a separate avenue of investigation to establish if this is true.

Through a careless mistake on the part of the hacker, the screenshots posted online show most of the URL of a proxy website that he used, named Ctunnel. The service, based in Athens, Ga., is run by one Gabriel Ramuglia, who has said that he would use that information to sift through his logs and establish the IP of the hacker. Although Ramuglia’s service is designed to protect his users’ anonymity, he has stated that he would fully co-operate with authorities as the hack violated his terms of service.