Hackers say they have gained access to U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo account and published some of its contents on the Wikileaks Web site.

On Wednesday, Wikileaks published several screen shots of Yahoo e-mail messages, e-mail addresses of Palin family members and associates, and other data that hackers claim to have obtained from Palin's private Yahoo account.

One e-mail message appears to be from Alaska Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, complaining to Palin about an interview by Alaska radio show host Dan Fagan. "Arghhh! He is so inconsistent and purposefully misleading," Palin apparently writes in response.

A hacking group known as Anonymous gained access to Palin's gov.palin@yahoo.com account late Tuesday night and sent the information to Wikileaks, which acts as an anonymous clearinghouse for leaked documents.

"Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to conduct government business and in the process avoid transparency laws," Wikileaks wrote in a note accompanying the material. "The list of correspondence, together with the account name, appears to re-enforce the criticism."

Palin is the governor of Alaska. She was named John McCain's vice-presidential running mate on Aug. 29.

Neither the McCain-Palin campaign nor Yahoo could immediately confirm whether Palin's account had actually been hacked.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.