Using Google News http://news.google.com/ I read a technology related article written by Mark Hachman in PC Magazine that interested me entitled “No Indictment in Palin Email Hack” dated September 24, 2008. We had discussed this a little bit in class the day the incident happened but I missed the news that night and the night after and basically missed out on the details of the whole episode. So when I saw this article on Google news I used this as an opportunity to research the incident as I was interested to learn how a high-profiled person’s email could in fact be hacked. I thought if the email account of Republican Vice Presidential hopeful Governor Sarah Palin could be broken into, what hope was there for the rest of us. The article explained how it was her personal rather than state email account that was infiltrated, her yahoo account, gov.palin@yahoo.com to be precise. The article itself gave mostly post event news of the story. It explained how David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student and son of Tennessee Democrat representative Mike Kernell, had not been indicted as expected for committing the offence. Mark Hachman stated how the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported the day before that “a federal grand jury had wrapped up hearings after failing to return an indictment.” That paper hinted that there would be subsequent Grand Juries because Kernell was still being investigated by the FBI.
To learn more about how the email was hacked I could have entered one of the links offered on this page but since we were asked to do some additional research by using the conventional Google search engine, I used that instead. Through various effective search words like “Palin and email”, “Palin and hacked” and “Sarah Palin’s email” I found several articles that answered all my questions and gave me a detailed account of all aspects of the story. The best article, in that it provided how the job was actually done, was an article written by Brian Heater on September 18, 2008 simply entitled “How Sarah Palin’s Email was Hacked.” Apparently the hack was a simple hack in that it did not need sophisticated technical expertise. Kernell successfully navigated through Yahoo’s password reset process.
Yahoo uses a password reset feature which makes use of personal data to gain access to an account. This would work ok for most of us but not so well for those in public office where personal information is public knowledge or can at least be found pretty easily on the internet. It only took Kernell 45 minutes to get access to Sarah Palin’s email account. All he had to do was find out Palin’s birthdate, zipcode, and research where she met her spouse which turned out the be Wasilla High. Between Google and Wikipedia’s research engines he reset Palin’s security questions, renamed her password to popcorn, and entered her account. What he found was five screen shots of email accounts (including some emails to/from Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, staffer Ivy Frye, and Amy McCorkell/ Governor’s Advisory board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse), two digital photos of Sarah Palin’s family, and an address book. 4Chan’s “random” /b/board then sent the documents to Wilileaks, which is a “whistleblower” website that allows users to anonymously publish sensitive documents. Wilileaks then made the data available on its web site via zip files.
In another article, Chloe Albanesius gave us the reasoning behind Kernell’s “investigation” in the first place. Sarah Palin had already come under fire for allegedly using her personal Yahoo account to conduct business matters. This is forbidden by law for accountability and security reasons. Andree McLeod, former vice chair of the Alaskan Republican party had already requested Palin to release more than 1,100 emails that she withheld from a public records request. So Kernell decided to take the law into his own hards. “Rubico” Kernell’s alias, was hoping to dig up some major dirt on Palin. Eric Blair, in his article in eFlux Media dated 9/19/08, stated how this was rather ironic. Kernell in his hopes to dig up “dirt” on Palin went about it in a way that was far from “clean.” Now Sarah Palin’s two email accounts have also been “cleaned” – in fact they have been deleted.
So after reading several articles I had the full Palin Email Hack story!
To learn more about how the email was hacked I could have entered one of the links offered on this page but since we were asked to do some additional research by using the conventional Google search engine, I used that instead. Through various effective search words like “Palin and email”, “Palin and hacked” and “Sarah Palin’s email” I found several articles that answered all my questions and gave me a detailed account of all aspects of the story. The best article, in that it provided how the job was actually done, was an article written by Brian Heater on September 18, 2008 simply entitled “How Sarah Palin’s Email was Hacked.” Apparently the hack was a simple hack in that it did not need sophisticated technical expertise. Kernell successfully navigated through Yahoo’s password reset process.
Yahoo uses a password reset feature which makes use of personal data to gain access to an account. This would work ok for most of us but not so well for those in public office where personal information is public knowledge or can at least be found pretty easily on the internet. It only took Kernell 45 minutes to get access to Sarah Palin’s email account. All he had to do was find out Palin’s birthdate, zipcode, and research where she met her spouse which turned out the be Wasilla High. Between Google and Wikipedia’s research engines he reset Palin’s security questions, renamed her password to popcorn, and entered her account. What he found was five screen shots of email accounts (including some emails to/from Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, staffer Ivy Frye, and Amy McCorkell/ Governor’s Advisory board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse), two digital photos of Sarah Palin’s family, and an address book. 4Chan’s “random” /b/board then sent the documents to Wilileaks, which is a “whistleblower” website that allows users to anonymously publish sensitive documents. Wilileaks then made the data available on its web site via zip files.
In another article, Chloe Albanesius gave us the reasoning behind Kernell’s “investigation” in the first place. Sarah Palin had already come under fire for allegedly using her personal Yahoo account to conduct business matters. This is forbidden by law for accountability and security reasons. Andree McLeod, former vice chair of the Alaskan Republican party had already requested Palin to release more than 1,100 emails that she withheld from a public records request. So Kernell decided to take the law into his own hards. “Rubico” Kernell’s alias, was hoping to dig up some major dirt on Palin. Eric Blair, in his article in eFlux Media dated 9/19/08, stated how this was rather ironic. Kernell in his hopes to dig up “dirt” on Palin went about it in a way that was far from “clean.” Now Sarah Palin’s two email accounts have also been “cleaned” – in fact they have been deleted.
So after reading several articles I had the full Palin Email Hack story!
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