The hunt for the hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account is shaping up to be a remarkably simple investigation, by the standards of major cybersecurity whodunits.

US investigators figure the hacker claimed responsibility in a detailed accounting that included his own personal e-mail address and that he tried to cover his trail using a US Internet anonymity service that has been surprisingly cooperative with the FBI in efforts to peel away that anonymity.

Not exactly the plot of a Hollywood thriller.