Palin Email Hacker Found 767
mortonda writes to tell us that the person responsible for breaching Sarah Palin's private email account has been found. We discussed the breach last Wednesday, shortly before the hacker, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, posted a message detailing his methods. Wired has a story examining the potential legal consequences for the hacker.
Re:"Hacker" (Score:5, Informative)
If you have followed the story, he didn't guess the password. He used publicly available information to fool Yahoo's password recovery tool to give it up.
As simple as it may sound, it is a bit more involved than 'guessing' a password.
Re:Public Records (Score:5, Informative)
Why is Sarah Palin using a private account when she is Governor?
Because there are laws in place that say what you can and cannot do with government services and equipment. What you do not seem to get is she was abiding by these laws. Thats why she has 2 (or more) email accounts. The hacker ought to be prosecuted, he even said he did it with malicious intent
I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be
but guess what? he found squat and diddly.
I read though the emails... ALL OF THEM... before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor.... And pictures of her family
Not much of a "hack" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This Just In (Score:2, Informative)
As Officer Bar Brady says "Nothin to see here, move along now".
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
Email is a lot easier to record? There's always been a divide between the written and spoken word, from business deals (oral contract is only binding up to $500 in Florida), to courtroom hearings (hearsay, your word vs. mine, etc). You can request copies of government memos; email is electronic mail; it stands to reason that any official written communication should be kept. Lots of meetings are held behind closed doors because there's no written record for public consumption.
There's lots of other cases where emails are available for public consumption; for instance emails back to 1996 for the Seattle metro service are all available for review. On the flip side you have a matter of public record, historical records for data mining, and more. Imagine how boring history would have been if we didn't have access to Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln's personal letters today?
Governors aren't required to record their telephone conversations, although I know Nixon was a fan of doing so - which is partially what got him in trouble in the first place. I'm not sure what the outcome was in court about whether those are considered personal or not. I know in most states both parties have to be aware of the conversation being recorded. In Virginia(?) only one party is required to know that the conversation is being recorded.
Re:This Just In (Score:1, Informative)
But she didn't conduct any official business with the yahoo account! All that was in it were family pictures and emails to her friends. IMO, she did the correct thing by not using a govt.-paid for email account for personal communications.
Also, by the fact that you falsely stated she conducted "official business" with the yahoo account, I cannot help but think you have some type of bias, as why else would you blatantly falsify information???
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
He put a name he uses elsewhere in the name field. That name was then connected to an email account.
Re:Public Records (Score:5, Informative)
Why is Sarah Palin using a private account when she is Governor?
Because there are laws in place that say what you can and cannot do with government services and equipment. What you do not seem to get is she was abiding by these laws. Thats why she has 2 (or more) email accounts. The hacker ought to be prosecuted, he even said he did it with malicious intent
That's not why she uses personal e-mail accounts for state business. [nytimes.com]
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Re:Equal punishment? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Shame on you Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
This is the OP but apparently the FBI served a search warrant at Mr. Kernell's residence at UT. Link [wbir.com]. I hope the FBI had more evidence to go on than some posting on /b/.
Re:Why can't a government employee use Yahoo? (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the newsbits explicitly mention that "Governor Palin has come under media criticism in the past week for using private email accounts to avoid Alaskan freedom of information laws." Neither of you seem to have even read the original story?!
Re:step to step guide how not to get caught (Score:4, Informative)
Trashing the PC is absurdly paranoid. This would be more than sufficient:
1) Live in a large-ish city. Go to a popular cafe with free wifi and find a corner where nobody can see your screen.
2) Reset your MAC address to something random and connect. Bonus points for hacking into a WEP network accessible from the cafe.
3) Tunnel through Tor and do exactly what you need to do and nothing else.
4) Disconnect, reset your MAC. Stay a little while, finish your drink, and leave.
Even that's a little overly careful. Do that and there's no conceivable way to be caught. In this age of ubiquitous wireless networks, anyone who hacks from their own account richly deserves to be caught.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, you mean like the White House e-mails?
Now, before I get anyone confused, let me point out that White House e-mails were lost during the Clinton administration too. (People just seem to have conveniently forgotten about that one).
Is the issue one of "Open Government"? Fine, I believe in that too.
Sorry, but I don't buy the idea that one party or the other is the essence of purity in this area.
Years ago they were able to pass "Government in the Sunshine" laws in Florida and as an expatriate of that state I decided to read up on how things had worked out (since I hadn't heard the concept bragged about recently).
Apparently not so well.
Get this through your head: If people want to conspire they will find a way to do it, no matter what obstacles you put in their way. Having government archive e-mails (good in theory, bad in practice with the type of people who work in government) simply means they switch to Blackberries, monitor those they switch to text messages, monitor those they use use post-it notes, track those it will be mouth to ear whispers in a noisy disco somewhere.
The better apporach is to spot collusion from the outcomes and punish it.
Does the average Slashdot reader need to be shown an e-mail to convince them that Microsoft and Intel have worked together to lock up the PC industry? I don't, and I hope in the future, some Federal prosecutor has the brains and best interest of the county to follow the obvious tracks of collusion without the need of e-mail messages or post-it notes to guide him/her.
Selection of Yahoo for e-mail was stupid for no other reason that Yahoo is a lousy e-mail system.
But then again, I've watched Federal government people sign on to their e-mail at home and guess what?: It's web based. It has cookies, it's hackable, and of course, we have plenty of evidence that they lose things.
There are so many red herrings in this story it has gotten ridiculous. So far the only thing embarrassing about this story to come out is incompetence of some low-level Democratic operative, who at this point has actually committed a crime, and some equal incompetence (presumably) of some yet to be named assistant to the Governor who doesn't know how to do product selection.
If you think there needs to be transparency in government, fine. But you are going to have to do a lot more than the half hearted government archiving of e-mails that occurs now.
Start by mandating video of all government sponsored meetings that don't involve security clearance. Bug every room in Washington and post it all to You-tube. Make video Podcasts out of every meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus. I'm all for trying it.
Oh, but before you do, read up on the aftermath of previous open government efforts at the state level. It may open your eyes.
Hint: As advanced as modern medicine is, we still track the spread of disease by the spread of symptoms, not the travels of individual bacterium or bacteriophages.
Re:Why can't a government employee use Yahoo? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually she was using her yahoo email accounts to conduct state business. [adn.com]
Re:Public Records -- The Catch-22 (Score:5, Informative)
What I've seen here is that Palin properly followed the demarcation line between "official business" which is done via official state systems, and "private communications" which may NOT be done via state systems.
Then you've seen only what you've wanted to see. Palin thoughout her time in office has consistently blurred the official with the personal.
For starters, if she wished to keep the line clearly marked, she should have chosen an email handle other than gov.sarah.
Then there's this from the New York Times:
While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a "personal device" like a BlackBerry "would be confidential and not subject to subpoena."
Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account "when there was significant state business."
On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin's state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: "Frank, this is not the governor's personal account."
Mr. Bailey responded: "Whoops~!"
Whoops, indeed. I wouldn't consider this a distraction from the issues, especially given the Bush Administration's record. I find it among the scariest aspects of her prospective election.
The Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually not true. If you take the time to look at the information posted on wikileaks, you'll notice a number of emails have titles such as "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger / Container Tax", "Court of Appeals / Executive Director Parole Board / Boards and Commissions", "Re: DPS Personnel and Budget Issues", "Court of Appeals Nominations", "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter". Those definitely sound like official state business, although it's impossible to know now that the account has been deleted.
As for the lack of any sort of incriminating information, what does that prove? It's not an official email account. There's no requirement that the information is archived; if any of the emails did contain information that would provide evidence of wrongdoing, Palin can simply delete them at any time. That's the issue: Palin promised transparency in government, but she's done the opposite, and has made herself unaccountable for her actions as Governor.
For the complete list of emails, see: http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008i [wikileaks.org]
Re:This Just In (Score:2, Informative)
You got an extra i on the end of that URL - here is one the works:
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008 [wikileaks.org]
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
Ever heard of Hans-Martin Tillack? His office was raided and his equipment seized by Belgian police because he had the audacity to protect a whistle-blower in a fraud case. He eventually got compensation, but as far as I'm aware he hasn't re-gained his possessions. I would bet money on the whistle-blower having been sacked by now. The whole sorry saga is here [euobserver.com]. In the mean time the accounts have not been signed off for the thirteenth year running [bbc.co.uk] (the Tories are reporting a fourteenth).
I hate it when we Europeans pretend to be so vastly superior to those ghastly Americans out of sheer ignorance.
p.s. I am a Europhile, I just don't think this kind of thing should be covered up out of misguided solidarity with the European Project.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
Well first off this hacker is stupid, no surprise he got caught. To do this right he would have downloaded the entire mailbox, not just made a few "I made it" screenshots. We really only got to see a couple of messages, and they are not particularly interesting.
Second, Palin has *two* Yahoo accounts. The one she is suspected of using inappropriately wasn't hacked. If the hacker was a bit more subtle--some social engineering, perhaps? I'll be the other one could have been breached also. By now she is probably well on her way to furiously deleting those messages.
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
But she didn't conduct any official business with the yahoo account! All that was in it were family pictures and emails to her friends.
Really? How do you know that?
Do these sound like personal emails [wikileaks.org] to you?
Subject: Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger / Container Tax
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: FW: Motor Fuel Tax Suspension
From: Meghan Stapleton (Press Secretary)
Subject: RE: Using Royalty Oil to Lower the Cost of Fuel for Alaskans
From: Nizich, Michael A (Chief of Staff)
Subject: Court of Appeals / Executive Director Parole Board / Boards and Commissions
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: RE: Please approve
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: Rural Wireless Service
From: McBride, Rhonda (Rural Advisor)
Subject: FW: DPS Employee Draft
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: Re: DPS Personnel and Budget Issues
From: McAllister, William D (Communciations Director)
Subject: FW: DPS Personnel and Budget Issues
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: Court of Appeals Nominations
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: another records request
From: Nizich, Michael A (Chief of Staff)
Subject: RE: Scheduling - Week of 08.10.08
From: Mason, Janice L (Scheduling Assistant
Subject: FW: Capitalizing on coal reserves, Crow Tribe strikes deal for $7B
From: Nizich, Michael A (Chief of Staff)
Subject: Status report
From: Ruaro, Randall P (Deputy Chief of Staff)
Subject: FW: Special session press release
From: Nizich, Michael A (Chief of Staff)
Subject: Followup.
From: Colberg, Talis J (Alaska Attorney General)
Subject: FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter
From: Nizich, Michael A (Chief of Staff)
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, that's just not true.
Palin's Yahoo account contained emails with subject lines like "Court of Appeals / Executive Director Parole Board / Boards and Commissions", and "FW: DPS Personnel and Budget Issues", and "Draft letter to Governor Schwarzenegger / Container Tax". Check the wikileaks site, it's all laid out for anyone to see.
Palin's account does contain emails that relate to government business. Saying "there was no government business on her account" over, and over, and over, as people seem to be doing in this forum, doesn't change the facts. Although that seems to be a common tactic for their campaign these days: repeat the lie so many times that it starts to sound true, like Palin's "I told them thanks but no thanks" lie about the Bridge to Nowhere.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
/b/ is the center of the internets.
OK, OK. /b/ [4chan.org] is an image board on 4chan [4chan.org] where many memes originate, and where a lot of actions by Anonymous are talked about. Anonymous pretty much originated from 4chan (among a few other sites) because of their "forced-anon" rule, which basically forces everyone to post anonymously.
Encyclopedia Dramatica has more [encycloped...matica.com] but fair warning, it's definitely NSFW (as is /b/ itself).
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
"But she didn't conduct any official business with the yahoo account! All that was in it were family pictures and emails to her friends. IMO, she did the correct thing by not using a govt.-paid for email account for personal communications."
This is incorrect. She specifically set up two Yahoo accounts, one for personal email (gov.sarah@yahoo.com) and another (gov.palin@yahoo.com). The latter was specifically set up because she could avoid Alaska's Sunshine Laws that require all government business to be archived and (with very narrow exceptions) available to the public. In the email archive is a discussion where she and her staff confirm that the use of the yahoo accounts hides their emails from court subpoena's, and she even reprimands one staffer for using her official email instead of the yahoo account.
So while Yahoo email accounts do have a legitimate expectation of privacy, I'd argue that Palin lost her claim to privacy when she engaged in illegal evasion of Alaska's Sunshine Laws.
Re:Actually No (Score:5, Informative)
Heh.
Re:This Just In (Score:1, Informative)
If by CA you're referring to Canada, that's not entirely accurate. Common law is used at the Federal level in Canada and all provinces except Quebec. French civil law was restored in Quebec by Great Britain under the Quebec Act, which was one of the Intolerable Acts that lead to the American Revolution.
Re:This Just In (Score:4, Informative)
> Reference, please.
http://www.adn.com/palin/story/530493.html [adn.com]
"Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg said the governor, who was not subpoenaed, declined to participate in the investigation and said Palin administration employees who have been subpoenaed would not appear."
Palin's staff is ignoring supoenas, but parent has misstated what the subpoenas are about. They pertain to "Troopergate," not campaign financing.
Even easier (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
And just what issues have been discussed since she was announced the VP candidate?
Palin has, through her actions or words, emphasized the following issues:
1. Abortion
2. Religion in public schools
3. Firearm rights
4. The role of the US government at home
5. The role of the US government in other nations
I disagree with Palin on some of these issues, but they are all legitimate issues.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
declined to participate in the investigation
No surprise here. Why would she voluntarily subject herself to that kind of distraction during a presidential race?
Palin's staff is ignoring supoenas
But is Palin telling them to, or are they just ignoring them? The post to which I replied said specifically that she directed them to ignore the subpoenas.
Re:This Just In (Score:1, Informative)
Not only that, but also his father is admiting it was his son who did it...
"Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, confirmed that it is his 20-year-old son, David, who is being widely named on Internet blogs and chatrooms in connection with an unfolding story about Palin's hacked e-mail accounts."
links: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080918/NEWS02/80918081/1006/NEWS01 [tennessean.com] and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/palin_email_investigation_continues/ [theregister.co.uk].
Re:This Just In (Score:1, Informative)
In fact, the cracker responsible said he went through Palin's e-mail, and found absolutely nothing.
What was actually said:
I read though the emails⦠ALL OF THEM⦠before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governorâ¦.
And one last thing: if you consider this to be a politically-used account, then what _exactly_ is the difference between this and Watergate?
Well, for one, I don't think we're going to find any payouts to this kid from Obama's campaign bank account.
Re:step to step guide how not to get caught (Score:1, Informative)
1. Use a LiveCD of some sort
2. Change Mac address on your laptop
3. Connect to an open network
Less cash involved here.
Re:This Just In (Score:5, Informative)
He is not right:
1. U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous HerÂitage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonÂstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
2. Members of the all-volunteer military are sigÂnificantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 perÂcent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) proÂgram, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoodsâ"a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
3. American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted perÂsonnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18â"24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelorâ(TM)s degree.
4. Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of SouthÂern military tradition.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda08-05.cfm [heritage.org]
Re:"Hacker" (Score:2, Informative)
Umm, didn't he impersonate her by deliberately clicking on the "forgot my password" link and give information as if he were Palin?
After impersonating her, didn't he take control of the password of the account? Isn't that stealing her password?
I'm sorry, as bad as the press is, they weren't stretching the truth one bit.
Re:This Just In (Score:1, Informative)
This kid was very into servicing the community in which he participated. no, he was not a hacker, just an internet user like most of us. I recognized him from "popcorn." He did an excellent job of ripping hi-res softcore site content and rapidshitting it for everyone else. He was a virtual tagger, in that he made his rars with a password "popcorn." That was an annoyance, but he was one of few who put a pass on them so you could guess usually. Anyway, as an Anon, he delivered lots of high quality content. No he's not a hacker, no his Dad didn't put him up to anything, no this is not time for jerking knees. Just a kid that got in trouble. Hope he's okay. He didn't know how big this would be.
Re:This Just In (Score:4, Informative)
Louisiana uses Napoleonic law....things can get really strange down here legally sometimes due to that. Really different when you come from a common law state.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
Correction: She did NOT support the bridge to nowhere.
Yes [reuters.com] she [huffingtonpost.com] did [msn.com].
Re:This Just In (Score:4, Informative)
One of the e-mails was entitled: "Draft letter to Governor Schwartzenegger / Container Tax" [gawker.com]. Another was "Fw: veep talking pts". There's also an e-mail between Palin and Sean Parnell [gawker.com] regarding Sean's campaign for Congress. Parnell is the Lt. Governor of Alaska.
Anonymous wasn't smart enough to download all the e-mails but what do you think was in that draft letter e-mail?! No one is accusing her of anything wrong only because there is ACTUAL proof because Anonymous didn't download the messages, and because it's slimy to use stolen info to attack your political foes. But if you asked her under oath, Palin would probably have to admit that she's using her personal e-mail for at least some work-related e-mails.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
Realpolitik thereof (Score:2, Informative)
This fellow is what as known as a useful idiot. The Democratic Party benefits from his conduct and he goes to jail for his conduct. No one in the Party will defend him, lest a situation not totally unlike Watergate arise. It would still be political suicide for them to put their money where there mouth is and get him one of those trial lawyers working pro bono or via defense fund.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with using Tor with connection with /b/ has a problem: most Tor exit nodes are already banned on 4chan, finding one that works is a miracle (but it's still worth viditing just to see some of the ban reasons)
Update: doesn't look like it's this kid (Score:3, Informative)
Link [zdnet.com]
Meanwhile, Gabriel Ramuglia, webmaster of Ctunnel, the proxy service used to attack the Yahoo account, has identified the IP user of the perpetrator but he doesn't think it points to Kernell, Computerworld reports.
"Because I'm not in contact with the Internet service provider, I'm not 100% sure of where the IP is based," he said. "But from what I can tell, the IP address doesn't look consistent with the media reports."
The FBI will be able to close the loop, though, with the records of the ISP to which that IP address is assigned. Ramuglia said it is a small, residential ISP.
Now, it's always possible that he compromised someone else's box or drove a long distance away to someone else's computer.
Re:This Just In (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds a whole lot like government-attached work to me.
Maybe it was for her personal political career (as opposed to official state business), and maybe there are laws preventing her from using state resources to conduct her political career.
That sounds pretty likely to me, given that "ethics issues" are often unrelated to official business, and often related to a personal political career.