Washington - A 20-year-old Tennessee man has been indicted for allegedly hacking into Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's personal email account, US authorities said Wednesday.

David C Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars if convicted of accessing Palin's email account on Yahoo, taking screenshots of it and posting them on a public website, the Justice Department said.

Kernell is suspected of accessing Palin's email account on September 16 by correctly answering a series of security questions in order to reset the password. He is also believed to have posted his new password on the internet.

Palin's account was quickly shut down after the breech was discovered, and the McCain-Palin campaign released a statement calling the offense a "shocking invasion of privacy."

The hacker broke into the account as there were questions being raised as to whether, as governor of Alaska, Palin was wrongly using the personal account for state business. (dpa)