Palin email hacker caught. Or not -- Corrections
Primary tabs
Oops.
Hacker's dad seems to be a Democratic state representative in Tennessee, nam e removed.
Nothing profound to say here, except: People! Don't use 'secret hints' for your passwords that are data freely available on Wikipedia.
___________
Since intranets has asked so politely, I'll repeat my apology (posted in comments, as soon as I saw tnjen's further information on the subject) and correct my original post:
Wired (above) reported that a person claiming to be the Palin email hacker posted a first-person account of his hack; was connected to a particular username by 'bloggers'; is the son of a TN Democratic Rep; and that the person who owns the anonymizing service used by the alleged hacker had been contacted by the FBI to check his log files. (Wired has the text of the alleged hackers' confession email).
Local news from the alleged hackers area initially reported that the FBI had contacted the hacker and his father (since taken back, see below), but both hacker and father have denied being contacted by any officials.
Neither has, as far as I can find, denied the hack. I wouldn't even mention that, as it means a whole lot of nothing, except for intranets statement that "Both the father and the TN kid denied these allegations." The father has denied that he or his son have been contacted by any officials. Absence of denying the allegations, does not, of course, mean that they're true or likely to be true.
Tnjen provided some links showing the trajectory of the local story:
Local blogger talks to alleged hacker's father directly. No contact or investigation from FBI according to the father. Also attests to excellent character and honesty of the alleged hacker's father.
KnoxvilleViews, an alternative news site for Knoxville reports that the Knoxville News site which originally reported the connection to the local state Rep. was scrubbed and then updated to show that while the son is at the center of Internet rumors as the hacker, neither has been contacted by officials. Knoxville News says the original report was a miscommunication.
The updated Knoxville News site. Most recent version of story by KN.
Folks may also be interested in security experts take on the supposed hack:
Computerworld. Some experts find the security questions hack plausible, others are very skeptical.
That's all I've been able to dig up at this point (there are other articles online but they all lead back to either the Wired article or the KN article). So the only hard news here is that the FBI contacted the person running the proxy service, which may or may not be the service used by the alleged hacker, for his log files. Thanks to tnjen for the corrections and especially the v. helpful local angle.
To repeat and amplify my apology: I'm very sorry to have posted the original Wired article, esp. with what was a misleading title, and especially the family's name (although I can't figure out how to take that back without linking to the articles where the info was corrected, which actually has the names). I originally thought it was just an interesting bit, esp. about how easy the hack was supposed to be. If any other actual news surfaces, I'll try to post that.
- Valhalla's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
Well, there might be a little blowback on that...
Or not. And sayeth the kid, who really wasn't much of a hacker at all:
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Maybe I'm just a privacy freak
but I really wouldn't want anyone reading my extremely mundane personal email. Maybe because I'd hate for the whole world to know how extremely mundane my life really is.
another tip
don't hack into other people's email, especially if a close relative holds elective office. Just because you can do it doesn't make it right.
One of the Commenters Noted at Wired
this kid found a way to go from college student to felon in just a few easy steps. I'd say that about covers it. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. And if he panicked about being caught, why did he post the content? Oh, wait, that's right - he's 17. And stupid.
That's par for the course for hackers
In my day, it was "phone freaks," bright and bored high school and college students who found ways of ripping off The Phone Company for free long-distance calls. Guy I know actually did go to jail for a while for it. (And then went right back to phone freaking when he got out.)
I hope they throw the book at the kid.
Hacking someone on a national ticket is beyond stupid
This involves the damn FBI and Secret Service for fuck's sake! Who in their right mind would pull that shit? I hacked when I was his age and even I knew not to fuck around with the Feds. Goddamn!
Honestly, the worst digital/online mistake I ever made at his age was forwarding an e-mail from a friend I hadn't fully read. I read, "Funny!" and forwarded it without scrolling down to see it was literally image after image of huge, ginormous, hairy...balls. Actual human testicles of morbidly obese men. I can still see them!
And since I did this right around the time Alec Baldwin did his Schweaty Balls routine on SNL, I was hounded with lines from that skit for the rest of the year.
Valhalla: On Privacy Freaks
Hate to break it to you, but Bush has been reading our email for years, now. lol
I agree with Lambert, too. Really, could she have made this any easier? BTW, this kid needs punishment. I don't care if it were my enemy, going through someone else's mail is about as low as you can go in my book. I don't have any sympathy for hackers and wannabe hackers.
DamonMI
I know! But I figure I must be doing something wrong, because Bush hasn't been around to bug me about my private email. See, too mundane. Too low on the threat matrix. That's probably better protection against hacking or cracking anyway.
Unless...maybe it's all just a big head fake by Palin.
The kid is a student at UT
...and it's all over the news here in Knoxville. Given the politics of E. TN I'd say the he will see punishment enough from the community -- much of this area has been GOP since prior to the Civil War.
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
Story May be wrong
...there's some question on whether or not the story is entirely correct. Also, the Rep. is apparently receiving death threats over this.
linky
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
Are They Your Typical Republicans?
I asked because if they've remained Republicans even while the rest switched to Democrats prior to the 60's and then back, again, then they must be some pretty foreign Republicans to the rest of the Southern Republicans.
No, they're very different
...especially the older ones. East Tennessee was Union and never did side with the South. Some of the younger GOPers are more standard variety but Republicanism here (esp. in the Mountains) is very, very different than elsewhere. Our regional divisions (East, Middle, and West) unlike most states aren't just geographic but constitutional and have legal meaning and political consequence -- one of which was the East remaining at odds with the rest of the State and South. We also had a lot of maroon zones and were a refuge for triracial and biracial communities fleeing NC and VA prior to the Civil War and after. A true mountain republican here is much more concerned with making sure govt leaves them the hell alone and keeps taxes low than anything else. These Republicans soundly rejected Reagan (although their kids are more likely to embrace him).
ETA: The suburban East Tennessee GOPer is also more standard issue than the rural ones.
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
The "hacker" should get community service
teaching McCain how to navigate the internet.
tnjen
Aren't they saying that Kernell has admitted it was his son?
They did but then they scrubbed that
...and made it more ambiguous. Here's a better rundown.
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
That's What I Kind of Figured
For them to have been GOP during the Civil War, and to have remained as such in the South is nothing short of amazing, to me.
Definitely
E.TN has a very strange blend of politics.
Howard Baker is the probably the best of the old style East Tennessee GOP politicians. From his wiki:
Known in Washington, D.C. as the "Great Conciliator," Baker is often regarded as one of the most successful senators in terms of brokering compromises, enacting legislation, and maintaining civility. A story is sometimes told of a reporter telling a senior Democratic senator that privately, a plurality of his Democratic colleagues would vote for Baker for President of the United States. The senator is reported to have replied, "You're wrong. He'd win a majority."
When he retired Al Gore Jr. took his seat. My SO's grandfather (an East TN republican) used to meet with Baker and Al Gore Sr. and helped broker that race.
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
Maybe true but are we taking the word of the hacker that Palin
had an easy account to get into? Some computer types I used to know would always claim it was the victim's fault for not being security-conscious enough, even if the hackers were doing high tech stuff. The hacker got into the account in the first place for one. Anyway, let's not blame Palin--if she did use a simple answer, it was in response to a prompt written by the company. Should she have known better than the advice of her e-mail provider--or other businesses like say banks that do this too? They are supposed to have enough protection to prevent hacking.
Don't worry about the hacker--he'll have to pay his debt to society--but many of these guys do no jail time. Instead, they do community service like helping increase town computer security--and many of them get hired by computer companies, although usually for higher tech hacks.
OT: Anyone else receive an email from Charlie Rangel? I wanted
to get the banner on the page. It's pretty compeling and suprisingly he's not asking for money, just trust. I think he deserves it and I'm going to give that to him.
I love this job!
schadenfreude alert!
DOJ View on Email Privacy May Hamper Prosecution of Palin Hackers
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
There are those that hold to the theory that Obama's campaign
is behind this. Clearly just a theory and I have no linky goodness, so dispell my comment if you like.
I love this job!
Supporting Charlie Rangel
Yes, I have been thinking over the past day what we (his constituents) can do to support him, since I don't trust the party leadership to do so.
Elixir, I did not receive an email. I'll go do what I can to get on his list now. Oddly, that had not occurred to me before now.
Whatever merit there is to the charges being leveled against him, this is so obviously a campaign against this one particular person (I have no doubt similar stuff could be dug up on practically anyone in Congress) that I really have to wonder who is behind it.
(Edit: Oops, sorry, I thought I put this on the wrong thread and then realized it was the right thread. More coffee needed!)
For some reason, I'm not optimistc about FISA
being overturned, no matter who wins in November.
The temptation is too great.
TalkLeft
not covering the Rangel charges. Not even BTD. No mention at all in the posts, that I can see.
I am disappointed.
The dog that did not bark in the night...
Eh?
So, do a bit of research and post on it, if others won't!
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
I'm doing research in fact...
but don't have much time. But, dagnabbit, I'll make the time. May not get anything ready before Sunday night, if then, though.
What I'm wondering is, where is the rest of the left/progressive blogosphere? I mean, isn't this the kind of thing TalkLeft covers? Is everybody so distracted by PalinSpain that they can't even pause to mention this campaign (whoever's behind it) to find something to bring down the most powerful, arguably most reliably liberal member of Congress? I mean, cause that's sure how it looks to me.
Simple answers to simple questions..
Payback. Remember that Unity only applies to Republicans.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Well, if it turns out to be not this TN kid then
I'm sorry I posted. I blew off all the blog reports but figured Wired would be ok. (although come to think of it, the editors at Wired probably are getting their news off the blogs).
Valhalla the correction is nice
...but you're probably taking too much responsibility (why is it always the good guys/gals taking responsibility when the really bad ones never do? *sigh*). Anyways, what you initially relayed was printed in several legitimate sources including the Tennessean and the Knoxville News Sentinel before it was retracted. If anything, the regular papers we rely on for facts got ahead of the story. I think it's a good example of how cable news and blogs have rushed the news cycle and papers have followed in an effort to keep pace when what they should be doing is checking and double-checking their stories. Depth and analysis is what paper readers want,
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
WTF
Where do you see this? Both the father and the TN kid denied these allegations. When did this kind of bullshit become fact??!!
When they catch the kid, then I want to know about it.
This is sad, sad. You realize you are basing your accusations on a 4chan confession. At least update your fictitious bullshit post Val.
and for your daily dose of irony
Go here.
Link, please?
"Both the father and the TN kid denied these allegations."
tnjen
Thanks, but after I got over my annoyance at intranets and my ever-happy-to-dog-me pal BIO, I realized that my original headline was misleading. That was really bad. The Wired article didn't name names, I found those on one of the local sites, I should have followed Wired's lead on that.
Lambert posted a link the other day that also had information about how people process and store information, here, on source amnesia.
Some of the more interesting points for PB2.0 and media critique is that people forget the source of the information and only remember the information; after a while they remember information as true, even if the original statement came with a disclaimer.
But the article points to one of the possible antidotes, too:
With this story there are a bunch of possible opposite possibilities:
1. The son actually has no connection to any of it (eg, the original tracers of the hacker were mistaken).
2. The son is the person who wrote the admission of the hack (really, more like a weak crack), but isn't the hacker. Just as people falsely confess to crimes for attention-seeking, maybe he's claiming responsibility falsely.
3. He actually likes Palin and did hack her email, so he could release some innocuous emails and then claim they were all innocuous.
There's no more evidence for any of the above, really, than the original article, but they are alternative interpretations. We'll just have to wait and see. I'm guessing that if he turns out to not be the hacker, it won't make much MSM but is more likely to be followed up in the TN news.
If I'm not mistaken,
The hack was the work of "Anonymous," who do it for the lulz. It's not just one person.
The Times Sunday Magazine did a profile of a not-Anonymous hacker, but also discussed Anonymous and how that worked. Jaclyn Friedman also did an article in Bitch in May or June about the Anonymous attacks on feminist blogs last year.
They do this because they feel they have a right to teach people lessons. One of the hackers interviewed for the NYT piece hacked into the site for the Epilepsy Foundation and installed code that made the site display flashing graphics, which can trigger seizures. He justified it by saying that they deserved it because they left themselves vulnerable.
Interestingly, Anonymous is also anti-Scientology and protested outside the premiere of Katie Holmes' new play because Tom Cruise was there.
not really
The point is that there is no membership card. It's like a bunch of fark regulars, or even corrente posters were a big group of regulars and then one of them goes and makes a prank call, or hacks an epilepsy website, etc. There is no "anonymous" other than anyone who wants to claim they are. Obviously there is a scene of people who are /b/tards and do this stupid kind of stuff.
Any real hacker would not have been so careless as to use their own computer with no proxies, or brag about it. If this wasn't on the front page of the papers, it would have gone unnoticed most likely. At the very least it shows the problem with current password security and the stupid, recover your password nonsense.
He was the hacker
I was wrong when I said they "denied the allegations", but rather they "denied to comment" or denied they had been contacted or denied they were being investigated.
Here's the latest:
Some google hacking looks to be pretty solid 2003 links to David Kernell
Another non sourced story about father confirms his son being investigated
Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, said his 20-year-old son David had been contacted by authorities investigating the hacking of Palin’s personal e-mail account, the newspaper reported on its Web site this afternoon.
Internet digging on "rubico" and links to Kernell
It's not conclusive, but good enough for internet digging. I had not seen so many links from chess lover "rubico" back to Kernell names in profiles. The person in question appears to be 20 not 17.
actually
The more I read seems to indicate a rumor about being contacted directly. From all TV and newsprint sources it appears the father has continued to deny being contacted.
from The Tennesseean
"The person they're talking about is my son," said Kernell. "But we know of no investigation. I have not been contacted. He has not been contacted," Kernell told a Memphis TV station.
This kind of confirms that rubico is his son, which the internet breadcrumbs kind of confirms.
-FBI in Anchorage, Alaska has contacted the Memphis FBI bureau in the investigation.
- No one has formally announced any named suspects.
LA Times has a good piece about the blogosphere lynch mobs.
"No one, not even the Tennessean, has stood by reporting that the younger Kernell was contacted by the authorities"
Of course I also cannot find a quote other than confirming the son is at the center of the rumors. The only link by the way to "rubico" is from a post on 4chan taking credit for the hack. It is possible a setup of "rubico" but very very doubtful.
more on lynchmobs
Read the comments posted here which seem to be the best so far:
http://libertarianrepublican.blogspot.co...
The only link to rubico is from 4chan, so take that for what it is worth. Maybe Kernell is a /b/tard who was not involved and pissed someone off.
Either that or he is the world's dumbest person for both hacking and posting a confession under his own name. Oh, and using a nick on 4chan that links back to your IRL identity. This might be the ultimate troll if it turns out this guy was NOT involved.
UPDATE: Warrant served on Palin Hacker
...it appears the UT student has been served a warrant by the FBI.
http://www.wbir.com/news/breaking/story....
PB 2.0 - Supplement the wonk!
And, The Plot Thickens...
.
totally the right guy
...allegedly..
But too many fingerprints are point at one person.
Not only does the "rubico" go back to Kernell, but the proxy used and the unique URL from the proxy screengrab have been traced the ISP from his dorm room.
This kid is really, really dumb to (a) reset Palins password, then (b) post details to 4chan, then (c) not even post anonymously and used personally identifying username, then (d) post a screengrab with the full unique URL.
He is barely computer literate let alone a hacker. 4chan is not the kind of place you use a unique username on that easily googles back to your real name.
How far is he going to get?
Valhalla, thanks VERY much
For your last note. I hate the taste of crow. But I have found that sometimes it is good for the soul. Well done.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.