Ride the Lightning

UPDATE TO THE HACK OF PALIN’S E-MAIL

September 25, 2008

A federal grand heard evidence against David Kernell, the son of Democratic Tennessee State Rep. Mike Kernell, in the hacking of Governor Sarah Palin’s e-mail. It failed to return an indictment, but there is an ongoing FBI investigation and subsequent grand juries may of course elect to return an indictment. On Sunday morning, the FBI served a search warrant on Kernell’s apartment near the University of Tennessee, where he is a student. Kernell’s roommates have been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, according to television station KBIR.

Reportedly, Kernell goes by the handle "rubico." Someone posting from the e-mail address claimed that he had broken into Palin’s e-mail account. The poster explained that he broke into the account by answering some security questions that allowed him to change the password. Part of what the writer said, with all errors intact (though my red pen is twitchy), is below.

"It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info. Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)"

The hacker said online research also revealed the answer to the hardest question, "Where did you meet your spouse?" The answer was "Wasilla High."

A posting on 4chan.org, a website frequented by hackers, indentified some of the specifics of the hack as mentioned above. The Ctunnel proxy service was used in an attempt to mask the source IP address of the posting. The operator of the proxy service has handed over the IP cache records to the FBI, which allegedly led back to Kernell.

If David Kernell is indeed guilty, he is a poster child for stupid (and criminal) online conduct – and the consequences for his future may be grim. As is often said, if you’re going to do the crime, be prepared to do the time.

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