Post by: Manedwolf on September 19, 2008, 11:34:11 AM
Quote
Report: Tenn. legislator confirms son is at center of Palin hack chatter
Blogs, message boards link college student to e-mail address reportedly used by hacker
Gregg Keizer
September 19, 2008 (Computerworld) A Tennessee state legislator has confirmed that his son, a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, is the person being named on blogs and message boards in connection with the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account, a Nashville paper reported late yesterday.
State Rep. Mike Kernell told the Tennessean that his son, David Kernell, is at the center of speculation about the identity of the hacker who gained access to Palin's account.
Kernell, a Democrat, represents District 93, which encompasses the University of Memphis and other parts of southeast Memphis. He declined additional comment to the Tennessean.
On Wednesday, someone identified only as "rubico" posted a message to 4chan.org's popular /b/ board claiming to have gained access to Palin's e-mail by using Yahoo's password reset feature. Although the post was deleted from 4chan.org, a copy was sent to conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, who published it on her blog Wednesday.
Others linked the rubico handle on 4chan.org to the e-mail address "rubico10@yahoo.com," which was in turn linked to David Kernell through Internet searches that uncovered connections between him, the username and the e-mail address on such sites as YouTube. Kernell's YouTube page has since been closed. The rubico10@yahoo.com address was marked as "temporarily locked because of security concerns" by Yahoo early today.
In a blog that Kernell began in 2003 -- and which holds only three entries -- he identified himself as "rubicox," a variation of rubico10. Kernell also used the rubicox handle on a chess site linked from his blog.
Others made more unusual connections between the hacker dubbed rubico10 and Kernell.
In the posting to 4chan.org's /b/ board, rubico10 said that after gaining access to Palin's account, "I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower."
"Just dawned on me why he used the password 'popcorn'," said a user going by the name "akgoldrush" on the blog littlegreenfootballs.com. "Duh. Getting a little slow in my old age."
Gabriel Ramuglia, the webmaster of an Athens, Ga.-based proxy service, may be able to shed light on the identity of the hacker as early as today. On Thursday, Ramuglia said that the FBI had contacted both him and Yahoo the day before, asking for server logs to determine who had accessed Palin's account.
Ramuglia operates Ctunnel, an ad-supported proxy service targeted primarily at users in schools or businesses who want to access sites that are normally blocked by network administrators. Screenshots of several messages from Palin's account showed that the hacker had used Ramuglia's proxy service in an attempt to hide his or her tracks.
Ramuglia was in the middle of transferring about 80GB of log file data yesterday and hoped to start searching through it sometime today. "The FBI told me that they had asked for information by tomorrow [Friday] from Yahoo," Ramuglia said. "That's about the time frame I'll be able to search my logs."
He was also confident he would be able to pinpoint the person who used his proxy service to access Palin's account. "I should be able to track it down to their original ISP, and then the IP address of the person who did it," Ramuglia said. "Who did this abused my service and broke the law."
Both the FBI and Secret Service have opened investigations, but neither agency has made any public announcements of suspects or arrests.
Blogs, message boards link college student to e-mail address reportedly used by hacker
Gregg Keizer
September 19, 2008 (Computerworld) A Tennessee state legislator has confirmed that his son, a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, is the person being named on blogs and message boards in connection with the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account, a Nashville paper reported late yesterday.
State Rep. Mike Kernell told the Tennessean that his son, David Kernell, is at the center of speculation about the identity of the hacker who gained access to Palin's account.
Kernell, a Democrat, represents District 93, which encompasses the University of Memphis and other parts of southeast Memphis. He declined additional comment to the Tennessean.
On Wednesday, someone identified only as "rubico" posted a message to 4chan.org's popular /b/ board claiming to have gained access to Palin's e-mail by using Yahoo's password reset feature. Although the post was deleted from 4chan.org, a copy was sent to conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, who published it on her blog Wednesday.
Others linked the rubico handle on 4chan.org to the e-mail address "rubico10@yahoo.com," which was in turn linked to David Kernell through Internet searches that uncovered connections between him, the username and the e-mail address on such sites as YouTube. Kernell's YouTube page has since been closed. The rubico10@yahoo.com address was marked as "temporarily locked because of security concerns" by Yahoo early today.
In a blog that Kernell began in 2003 -- and which holds only three entries -- he identified himself as "rubicox," a variation of rubico10. Kernell also used the rubicox handle on a chess site linked from his blog.
Others made more unusual connections between the hacker dubbed rubico10 and Kernell.
In the posting to 4chan.org's /b/ board, rubico10 said that after gaining access to Palin's account, "I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower."
"Just dawned on me why he used the password 'popcorn'," said a user going by the name "akgoldrush" on the blog littlegreenfootballs.com. "Duh. Getting a little slow in my old age."
Gabriel Ramuglia, the webmaster of an Athens, Ga.-based proxy service, may be able to shed light on the identity of the hacker as early as today. On Thursday, Ramuglia said that the FBI had contacted both him and Yahoo the day before, asking for server logs to determine who had accessed Palin's account.
Ramuglia operates Ctunnel, an ad-supported proxy service targeted primarily at users in schools or businesses who want to access sites that are normally blocked by network administrators. Screenshots of several messages from Palin's account showed that the hacker had used Ramuglia's proxy service in an attempt to hide his or her tracks.
Ramuglia was in the middle of transferring about 80GB of log file data yesterday and hoped to start searching through it sometime today. "The FBI told me that they had asked for information by tomorrow [Friday] from Yahoo," Ramuglia said. "That's about the time frame I'll be able to search my logs."
He was also confident he would be able to pinpoint the person who used his proxy service to access Palin's account. "I should be able to track it down to their original ISP, and then the IP address of the person who did it," Ramuglia said. "Who did this abused my service and broke the law."
Both the FBI and Secret Service have opened investigations, but neither agency has made any public announcements of suspects or arrests.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9115158
Post by: Harold Tuttle on September 19, 2008, 11:43:33 AM
He has been linked to Obama's TN machine
His myspace pages are posted on one of the links I left
Post by: richyoung on September 19, 2008, 01:05:37 PM
Post by: Perd Hapley on September 19, 2008, 01:17:18 PM
fistful's redoubtable commentary:
If the elder Kernell had stayed home with his family, instead of getting involved in politics, his son would not be getting into trouble like this.
Post by: MechAg94 on September 19, 2008, 01:28:33 PM
His last name is Kernell. That's why popcorn.
fistful's redoubtable commentary:
If the elder Kernell had stayed home with his family, instead of getting involved in politics, his son would not be getting into trouble like this.
fistful's redoubtable commentary:
If the elder Kernell had stayed home with his family, instead of getting involved in politics, his son would not be getting into trouble like this.
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on September 19, 2008, 01:31:17 PM
Post by: Balog on September 19, 2008, 02:24:03 PM
Post by: The Annoyed Man on September 19, 2008, 02:30:56 PM
What's a /b/tard?
4chan member.
Post by: Balog on September 19, 2008, 02:42:15 PM
I thought the whole point of 4chan was anonymous posting?
Post by: Northwoods on September 19, 2008, 03:31:31 PM
I thought the whole point of 4chan was anonymous posting?
Post by: MrRezister on September 19, 2008, 03:39:50 PM
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on September 19, 2008, 03:41:40 PM
Post by: Hawkmoon on September 19, 2008, 04:22:19 PM
KEWL!
Post by: lupinus on September 19, 2008, 04:27:30 PM
Care to guess the response if this had been Michelle?
Post by: MrRezister on September 19, 2008, 05:56:26 PM
sexistracismdirtyrovestylepolitiks would be my first guess. Too bad we superprivileged overpowered Republicans can't be victims of any of that stuff!
Post by: RaspberrySurprise on September 19, 2008, 07:11:22 PM
Incorrect. /b/tard only refers to those who frequent /b/ not 4chan as a whole.
I thought the whole point of 4chan was anonymous posting?
/b/ no longer has forced anon, you can use a name optionally.
Post by: MicroBalrog on September 19, 2008, 09:49:17 PM
I thought the whole point of 4chan was anonymous posting?
Yes, but people who post there routinely are called /b/tards.
Post by: Iain on September 19, 2008, 10:49:36 PM
Help a brother out - why "popcorn"
I suspect that's just a weird coincidence.
Hope he gets the book thrown at him. I don't have the massive Palin crush that seems to be affecting even my countrymen on this board, but despise this kind of thing, whoever is the target.
Post by: Stand_watie on September 20, 2008, 02:00:18 AM
Help a brother out - why "popcorn"
I suspect that's just a weird coincidence.
Hope he gets the book thrown at him. I don't have the massive Palin crush that seems to be affecting even my countrymen on this board, but despise this kind of thing, whoever is the target.
Please don't disparage your countryman. He gets enough grief on this board already for his defense of current British thinking regarding "self defense". As a proper 'anglophile' I want to see our British members treated well. Now, stick together Ian. Y'all are a beat up, picked upon, and discouraged minority around here.
Post by: Boomhauer on September 20, 2008, 03:23:45 AM
I wanna second what c&sd said: What are the most likely repercussions for hacking private email accounts and posting the contents publicly. I may be sadistic, but I'm hoping this falls under some new "cyber terrorism" law somewhere...
I don't know for certain, but I think it probably falls under Federal wiretapping laws, which would make it a felony offense.
KEWL!
KEWL!
Not that that makes a different. Ya'll are forgetting that he is the son of a politician. A member of the elite. I seriously doubt he will get anything worse than a minor slap on the wrist. Maybe a little bit of probation, or a few hours of community service.
Post by: RocketMan on September 20, 2008, 06:38:41 AM
I wanna second what c&sd said: What are the most likely repercussions for hacking private email accounts and posting the contents publicly. I may be sadistic, but I'm hoping this falls under some new "cyber terrorism" law somewhere...
I don't know for certain, but I think it probably falls under Federal wiretapping laws, which would make it a felony offense.
KEWL!
KEWL!
Not that that makes a different. Ya'll are forgetting that he is the son of a politician. A member of the elite. I seriously doubt he will get anything worse than a minor slap on the wrist. Maybe a little bit of probation, or a few hours of community service.
He won't even get community service. This story will fade away very quickly, and the kid in question will suffer no sanctions.
If he were a Republican's kid, however...
Post by: Harold Tuttle on September 22, 2008, 02:19:46 PM
The FBI has served a search warrant against a 20-year-old college student in connection with the hacking of Sarah Palins personal e-mail account.
A witness told WBIR-TV that FBI agents served the warrant at the college residence of David Kernell, a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis.
The FBI and Secret Service launched a formal investigation on Sept. 17 into the hacking of one of Palins Yahoo! e-mail accounts. Yahoo! declined to comment Sept. 18 on details of the investigation, citing Palins privacy and the sensitivity of such investigations.
A Department of Justice spokesman told WBIR-TV that there has been investigatory activity in Knoxville regarding the investigation. A witness told the station that several agents arrived at Kernells apartment complex early Sunday morning.
A witness told the station they took photos inside Kernells apartment and that his three roommates were subpoenaed to testify this week in Chattanooga.
The hacker who compromised Palins account used Ctunnel.com, an Internet proxy site, which renders Web users anonymous, to get into Palins e-mail. The site is run by Gabriel Ramuglia, 25, a Web developer from Athens, Ga., who said the hacker left behind revealing clues after posting screen grabs of Palins inbox.
Ramuglia said he saw the screenshots and recognized his site. He is now working with the FBI to provide agents with his business logs to help identify the criminal.
I should be able to find out who is involved by going through my logs, he said. The FBI called me last night and they wanted to know that the logs werent deleted as long as they werent deleted and they asked me to help, so Im downloading them.
Ramuglia said the FBI told him they also reached out to Yahoo! to ask for help. The hope is that information from Yahoo! can be matched with something in the proxy sites logs, identifying the hacker. The logs from both Ctunnel.com and Yahoo! were to be delivered to the FBI last week, Ramuglia said.
As long as they didnt use a second proxy, I should be able to find them, Ramuglia said. I dont think they were careful enough to do that.
There is widespread speculation about who was behind the attack and what the motivation was.
Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks Inc., said he knows through personal contacts that members of the group Anonymous were involved in the Palin e-mail attack.
He said Anonymous is a loose network of a few dozen people who live in the United States and abroad and range from teenagers to 30-year-olds who share what he said is a sociopathic sense of humor.
Anonymous sort of takes pride in doing this publicly and pissing people off. There are other groups that do this, but they arent as public about it, Nazario said.
The confession read: i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story. It continued to say that what started as a prank was cut short because of panic over the possibility the FBI might investigate, the hacker wrote.
The hacker said the he guessed that Alaskas governor had met her husband in high school, and he or she knew Palins date of birth and home Zip code. Using those details, the hacker tricked Yahoo Inc.s service into assigning a new password, popcorn, for Palins e-mail account.
I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on Wasilla high, said the Internet posting.
The McCain campaign said Wednesday that the attack was a shocking invasion of the governors privacy and a violation of law.
The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them. We will have no further comment, the campaign said in a statement.
The break-in of Palins private account is especially significant because Palin sometimes uses non-government e-mail to conduct state business. Previously disclosed e-mails indicate her administration embraced Yahoo! accounts as an alternative to government e-mail, which could possibly be released to the public under Alaskas Open Records Act.
At the time, critics of Palins administration were poring over official e-mails they had obtained from the governors office looking for evidence of improper political activity
Post by: Jamisjockey on September 22, 2008, 03:45:58 PM