7 comments

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  Ryan Radia

  9 months ago

  A couple questions for the lawyers out there--
  First, some reports say the alleged hackers simply guessed the answer to Palin's password reset question, rather than attempt to crack or brute force her account. Is this at all relevant from a legal standpoint?
  Second, if it's true that Palin was conducting official government business via her Yahoo account in order to get around public records disclosure rules, is there a realistic chance that she will be investigated for committing a crime?
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  Ryan Radia

  9 months ago

  Sorry for the double post, but one other comment--what if the hackers had simply connected to Yahoo via Tor? Presumably that would have made it next to impossible to figure out their true identity. Also, assuming the hackers didn't want to get caught, I'm surprised they used a proxy server that logs IP addresses.
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  Andrew Grossman

  9 months ago

  @Ryan, whether the hackers guessed her password or forced their way in makes no difference. Analogously, it's still breaking and entering to push open an unlocked window and shimmy inside.
  
  As for Palin's use of the account, it depends entirely on Alaskan law. My guess, and it is only that, is that there may indeed be disclosure issues but the use is probably not wrongful per se. Surely a governor could use her home telephone line, for example, to receive business-related calls now and again.
  
  And third, yes, something like Tor could make it more difficult, though not necessarily impossible, to track down the offenders. That said, one criminal in a thousand is a genius; one doubts that a person engaged in a spur-of-the-moment non-economic crime like this would take the time (or even have the know-how) to cover his tracks effectively.
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  Anon

  9 months ago

  It's called /b/, not /b. As they say, "lurk moar."
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  Richard Bennett

  9 months ago

  Apparently the mystery hacker is a kid named David Kernell, a student at U. TN Knoxville whose dad is a TN state rep from Memphis and a Democrat.
  
  See http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...
  
  Consequently, the hand of Al Gore is evident behind this break-in.
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  James Grieves

  9 months ago

  "That said, one criminal in a thousand is a genius; one doubts that a person engaged in a spur-of-the-moment non-economic crime like this would take the time (or even have the know-how) to cover his tracks effectively."
  
  The /b/tards are generally quite knowledgeable about such matters, mainly because they tend to be up to at least something illegal/illicit online. Be it trolling or more sinister stuff.
  
  As such they're almost all aware of proxies and TOR. Indeed one of their numerous memes is "I'm behind seven proxies" and "Always use a proxycondom". If they are up to cracking an email account I would have imagined that they would know how to use TOR or proxies, although in this instance it seems that they fouled up quite heavily.
  
  But then, /b/ does have a far lower grade of hacker than some that can be found on other *chans, such as 711Chan or 420Chan. Those types occasionally use spoofed phone calls to set SWAT teams on their rivals. Comparatively 4Chan is fairly tame.
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  Payday Loan Advocate

  8 months ago

  After turning himself in to authorities, 20 year old David Kernell, son of Democratic Representative of Tennessee, Mike Kernell, is facing five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. He will be charged for hacking into GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal E-mail account. It is alleged that after reading the contents, he took a screen shot and posted it on a public Web site. The contents included email addresses, pictures, birthdays, and phone numbers of family members and more. To top it off, after resetting the password, he also posted the new one he had created, which allowed others to access the E-mail account themselves. Nonetheless, Kernell pleaded not guilty to the charges. Facing a $250,000 fine is intense. At $1,500 per loan, it would take about 167 individual payday loans to cover that outrageous expense.
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