Subscription Center
Sep 24, 2008 04:22 PM | 4
A federal grand jury today decided not to indict a University of Tennessee student in connection with the hacking of Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin's personal e-mail. The panel let David Kernell, the son of Democratic state Rep. Michael Kernell of Memphis, off the hook—for now—but the Justice Department told the Tennessean that its "inquiry into this matter is ongoing."
The Alaska governor's Yahoo! e-mail account was broken into last week by someone with an Internet address traced to the younger Kernell's apartment complex in Knoxville, Ars Technica reports. Someone visited Yahoo!'s mail service, reset Palin's password and announced results of the break-in on the Wikileaks.org Web site.
The FBI and U.S. Secret Service are investigating the incident, which was a multi-step process made possible by weaknesses in the password reset feature (found on many Web sites—not just Yahoo!) as well as proxy servers that allow people to cover their tracks as they navigate the Web. The hacker (or hackers) may have exploited the password resetting system of Yahoo's e-mail service using details about Palin's life—her birth date and zip code, for example—pulled from sources freely available on the Web.
Tags:
e-mail,
Internet,
Palin,
Hacker
More News Blog:
Next: What 'Deep Impact' might an asteroid make on Earth, astronauts ask
Previous: NIH director Zerhouni resigns
See what we're tweeting about
Deadline: Aug 31 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) is launching the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge whose
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
4 Comments
Add CommentFrom an IT point of view, all web based mail is unsafe and should never be used for offical use or expect any privacy. Even a basic aaministrator know this and the IT person in charge of the Alaska Gov. Office and anybody using yahoo, msn, gmail or any other non secure email should of or should be fired.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom an IT point of view, all web based mail is unsafe and should never be used for offical use or expect any privacy. Even a basic aaministrator know this and the IT person in charge of the Alaska Gov. Office and anybody using yahoo, msn, gmail or any other non secure email should of or should be fired.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo email is safe, web or otherwise. Do not fool yourself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the fact that all email is inherently unsafe isn't really the point, or why the hack was published on wikileaks. The point is that Palin's office, and a growing number of political offices up to and including the highest levels of our government, are using email accounts not connected to their official offices to conduct official business to circumvent subpeonas inquiring into their activities.
Expect this sort of thing to become more common, and for the sweet tears of the poor maligned politicos to become sweeter as they realize just how powerful the digital GPS rerecordable playback media world we live in really is.
Democratic Representative Mike Kernells son, David Kernell, was caught by authorities. Apparently he had reset the password and gained access to the GOP VP candidate Palin's personal Email account, according to CNN. He had taken a screenshot of her entire email directory which includes E-mail addresses, pictures, birthdates and phone numbers of family members, and more. After turning himself in, he pleaded not guilty despite the fact that he took the information he hacked and posted it to a public Web site. To make matters worse, he also posted the new password hed created, which allowed others to easily access Palin's E-mail themselves. David Kernell may be subject to the heat of a five-year prison term, $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release as a consequence. At the maximum of $1,500 per loan, that bail would require about 167 individual payday loans to free him from being condemned with other cellmates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPost Courtesy of Personal Money Store
Professional Blogging Team
Feed Back: 1-866-641-3406
Home: http://personalmoneystore.com/NoFaxPaydayLoans.html
Blog: http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/