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Update: Palin’s Hacker Identified
Jason Lee Miller
Staff Writer
2008-09-19
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Well, that didn't take long. The Anonymous hacker who broke into Sarah Palin's Yahoo email address has been identified as the son of a Tennessee state representative. And as postulated earlier, he gained access via the "forgot my password" security function.
 | | Update: Pali's Hacker Identified |  |
Tennessean.com is reporting confirmation from Mike Kernell, a Democrat state-level representative, that his 20-year-old son, David was the young man responsible for hacking Palin's Yahoo account and posting the details in a well-known online forum. David Kernell is a University of Tennessee student. The FBI and the Secret Service are said to be investigating.
Yesterday, on right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin's blog, a reader contacted her with a recovered forum post from "rubico," perhaps Kernell, that was repeatedly deleted by forum by moderators apparently uncomfortable with Palin's personal information and the how-to posted in an otherwise anything-goes forum.
after the password recovery was reenabled, 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 second was somewhat harder, the question was "where did you meet your spouse?" did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for "palin eloped" or some such in one of the tabs.
I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on "Wasilla high" I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…
The lesson there, among many others, is think carefully how you answer those "forgot my password" questions, if indeed there won't be a replacement system soon. It might be a good idea to think up a good lie you'll remember when answering the question so nobody can prevail via the truth. Then again, if you can remember a lie you shouldn't have trouble remembering you password, either.
The information was posted on Wikileaks.org, which is back up today presumably after being driven offline by scores of traffic. Gawker is in hot water over the situation to the point Bill O'Reilly is calling for law enforcement to go after the site because of phone numbers (including those of Palin's kids) and other personal information posted there as a result of the hack.
The ironies in the case are certainly interesting. The hacker sought to hurt Palin and ended up shoring up sympathy for her, and he also sought the approval of amorphous anarchists Anonymous, which turned on him for crossing the line. Neocons will certainly highlight the Kernell is the son of Democrat legislator, twisting that into some kind of proof of evil and conspiracy concept even when, to understand Anonymous, if it is possible, is to know their only ideology is anti-ideology.
Maybe it's time to change the spelling to idiology.
About the Author:
Jason is a graduate of the University of Kentucky. He covers business, technology, and security issues.
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