huh huh huh, they said penetrated......

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors said on Thursday they were searching for a computer hacker believed by the United States to have penetrated the NASA space agency, causing damage reportedly estimated at $1 million.

The search was focusing on Poznan in the west of Poland, a country which has a tradition of codebreaking dating back to helping crack Nazi Germany's Enigma encryption machine during World War Two.

But regional prosecutor Miroslaw Adamski declined to confirm a newspaper report that U.S. cybercops had followed an electronic trail to a computer used by a Poznan high school graduate.

"We started our investigation earlier this month after receiving information from the U.S. embassy," Adamski told Reuters. "At the moment, we don't want to confirm any of the accusations."

Adamski did, however, say investigators were examining computers from which the electronic break-in was believed to have originated.

Newspapers reported that a liaison officer from the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aiding the probe in a bid to ascertain how much data had been taken from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

No comment was immediately available from the U.S. embassy.