Palin Email Hacker Found

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.

Comments

This Just In

[TheSpoom]

Cracker is an idiot. Ever hear of Tor? Or better yet, post the information on something like Freenet and just advertise it on Freenet somehow and let other people get the information out to the main web.

Of course, the fact that he posted his nick on /b/ when it's usually forced-anon anyway means he basically confessed. Not to mention that he said which proxy service he used -- note to criminals: if you want to get away with something, don't brag about how you did it!

Re:This Just In

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless someone just compromised that forum account and framed him.

Re:This Just In

[Hadlock]

The whole reason Palin is using Yahoo instead of government sponsored email is that any email sent through those channels is archived for a Very Long Time as a matter of public record. Wondering what the clerk at the DMV is REALLY emailing about? Put in a freedom of information act request and it's all yours.
 
By Palin using yahoo, it's not closely watched and she can conduct official business off the record. It's very poor form to do so and is the real story here.

Re:This Just In

[Greyfox]

I have yet to see anyone ask Cheney or Palin if they feel they are above the law. Their actions seem to indicate they do.

I have trouble understanding why we put people with such obvious contempt for the law in positions that are in charge of it.

Re:This Just In

[Hadlock]

I have trouble understanding why we put people with such obvious contempt for the law in positions that are in charge of it.
 
Brilliant marketing, and the general public's desire to believe what they're told in hopes that it will come true. If the general public were half as smart as we give them credit for the world would have never seen Napoleian, Cesar (well actually the Romans solved that problem on their own), Castro, Hugo Chavez and more. But as the protestants like to point out, people are like sheep and will head in whatever direction the man who speaks softly but carries a big stick says.

Re:This Just In

[Sephr]

Forum account? 4chan doesn't have 'accounts' to be compromised. And tripcodes don't give any user information, just verifiers the username. The only identifiable info on 4chan would be the IP.

Re:This Just In

[Anonymous Coward]

He put a name he uses elsewhere in the name field. That name was then connected to an email account.

Re:This Just In

[jadavis]

You cannot attack her because that would make her a victim and she makes you appear rude.

Someone violated her privacy, broke the law, and distracted from other issues during the presidential election.

That's a little more than "rude".

As far as the usual political back-and-forth (the legal kind), every politician uses rhetorical shields to hide from legitimate criticism. Ultimately, the people decide what's a legitimate criticism and what is not.

Many people have decided that, yes, it is rude to criticize Palin for the actions of her daughter, or to question the parents of her youngest child.

But it's not rude to criticize her for supporting the bridge to nowhere, or some policy position you disagree with. If she tries to hide behind the "underdog" persona to avoid these charges she will be unsuccessful.

Re:This Just In

[flyingsquid]

She wasn't using the account for gov business, at least not based on what was posted on wikileaks, or according to the purported "Hacker".

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

Re:This Just In

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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".

No, no, no...
Those weren't actual messages about government business.
They were just spam messages with misleading subject lines crafted to trick a politician into reading them.
Governors on yahoo get them ALL the time!
You should see the spam she gets now that she is a vp candidate - lots of messages that appear to be from Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Jerry Falwell and Bob Dole.

But open them up, and they are just advertisements for viagra. Wait a second, the ones from Bob Dole probably really are from him.

Re:This Just In

[jabithew]

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. In the mean time the accounts have not been signed off for the thirteenth year running (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

[jabithew]

Belgium uses the civil law system, otherwise known as the Napoleonic code. The majority of American states use English common law system*, which relies a lot more on judicial judgement and precedent (which have the same force as law itself, effectively allowing courts to legislate). Our common law actually has a lot in common with Shari'a in terms of how it works.

*CA, for example, doesn't. Neither does Scotland, hence English.

Re:This Just In

[flyingsquid]

Personally, I'm fed up with all this "sexist" bullshit that's surrounded her nomination. Sure, nominating a female VP is historic (kinda sorta, since the Dems did it 24 years ago). Are we suddenly supposed to stop asking questions about whether this woman is experienced enough or capable enough to assume the leadership of the United States of America? We are, after all, engaged in two major wars.

And yes, small-town hockey mom becomes vice presidential candidate, that's a good story. It's like a Hollywood script, or a fairy tale where the girl raised on a farm suddenly discovers she's really a princess. Yeah, it's a cute story, and I hate to see a good story spoiled, but our economy is facing the biggest crisis since the crash of 1929. I want somebody smart and experienced ready to take over if anything happens to McCain.

But Palin simply isn't qualified. Her performance during the ABC interview revealed that she had virtually no understanding of American foreign policy. Anyone who regularly reads a serious news magazine like The Economist or a major newspaper like the New York Times or Washington Post would be familiar with the questions that Gibson brought up- the Bush Doctrine, the right of America to strike in Pakistan- but Palin didn't seem to have ever thought about either before. Palin argued, in all seriousness, than being able to see Russia from Alaska somehow gave her some sort of experience. That's like arguing that you're ready to engage in negotiations with Putin because you saw Rocky Balboa fight Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV".

After the ABC interview- watch it on YouTube, if you haven't seen it already- only way you can argue that Palin can be taken seriously is to lower the bar. The only way you can argue that she is qualified is to argue that as a woman, she can't be expected to have the same understanding of foreign policy as the men. Now thatis sexist.

Re:This Just In

[jadavis]

Palin wants to continue the policies of the current White House administration where everyones privacy can be violated by the White House without any consequences even though it breakes federal law.

Even if that's true, it's unrelated to the matter at hand. It's illegal for government to read your email without a warrant, and illegal for private citizens to do so without your permission.

It's hypocritical of you to stand for privacy rights when it suits your needs, but then act as an apologist for people who violate the privacy laws already on the books.

used a non-governmental email account to hide how she uses the powers given her by her office.

I still have seen no evidence that she used the Yahoo account for the specific purpose of hiding communications.

Re:This Just In

[flyingsquid]

Sorry, but NO! There was no government business on her Yahoo account, so no law was broken.

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

[daemonenwind]

Absolute tripe.

Do you have a job?

Do you have an e-mail account you use which is not associated with your job?

All these assumptions about what goes on in private e-mail accounts have not been substantiated. In fact, the cracker responsible said he went through Palin's e-mail, and found absolutely nothing.

Furthermore, since this cracker is the son of a Democrat, he would have known what to look for. Instead, he freely admits it's just stuff like communications with friends, casual conversations with other Republicans, and pictures of her kids.

There's nothing there - as the opposition party fully admits - but it sure doesn't stop the idiot conspiracy theorists from foaming at the mouth.

And one last thing: if you consider this to be a politically-used account, then what _exactly_ is the difference between this and Watergate?

Answer: nothing.

Re:This Just In

[funwithBSD]

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

Re:This Just In

[QuickSilver_999]

I'd put in 10bux for his legal defense.

Good to know that you don't care about people doing illegal things just to TRY to get some dirt (even if they fail). So when we send covert operatives in to dumpster dive and hack into bank records to find out how Joe Biden is owned by the credit card companies (As one of my friends puts it, "You mean the Senator from MBNA?") Or when we dig to find out exactly HOW his house was paid for? Or perhaps dig into personal emails and such to find out exactly how linked Obama and Ayers are? Or Rezko? Will you put some cash in for those operatives as well?
You like this guy because he tried to "get" Sarah Palin. And as I have noted further down, didn't. If this would have been the other way around, you would have been bleating bloody murder about how horrible it was that a Republican would stoop to doing something illegal. Why you might even call it a Watergate! Perhaps this should be called YahooGate? After all, breaking in to email is to me the equivalent of breaking into a private office in a hotel.

Re:"Hacker"

[Helios1182]

It is usually the easiest way for a lot of systems; that, or just ask the user and they will tell you.

Re:"Hacker"

[swabeui]

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:"Hacker"

[Ritchie70]

Not even password guessing. He apparently took public information about her and reset the password.

If anyone wondered if demanding date of birth, home town, etc. was a BAD way of determining identity, this should resolve that for them.

Re:Equal punishment?

[enjoyoutdoors]

Like the GOP staff that used an exploit to read their oppositions email? Hmm, there were no legal consequences in that case. Maybe there should have been? Report Finds Republican Aides Spied On Democrats http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0D7103FF936A35750C0A9629C8B63

Because Yahoo is not for gov business.

[drerwk]

Do you know that she seems to have been using the account for gov business? No matter what the kid said or saw there is more to it than you seem to know.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/17/palins_yahoo_account_hacked.html

Among the e-mails released as part of the records request in June were several from Frye asking a state official whether private e-mail accounts and messages sent to BlackBerry devices are immune to subpoena, then reporting the answer to the governor and her husband, Todd, who also uses a Yahoo! mail address.

Asking if Yahoo accounts are subject to subpoena and relaying the answer to the governor suggests to me that the accounts were not simple private email accounts.

Re:Why can't a government employee use Yahoo?

[Stalyn]

Actually she was using her yahoo email accounts to conduct state business.

Re:Public Records -- The Catch-22

[klenwell]

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