Palin hacker indicted

10.09.08

palin A federal grand jury has indicted the man accused of hacking into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail account. 20 year old David Kernell turned himself into authorities earlier this week. The University of Tennessee student is the son of Tennessee state Rep. Mike Kernell, who happens to be a Democrat.

Authorities say Kernell hacked Palin’s account last month by exploiting Yahoo’s password recovery system after the Alaska governor’s e-mail address was revealed in earlier news stories. Some of the accounts contents were posted on an infamous hacker site called 4Chan and eventually made their way to the media.

“Cyber crime is the FBI’s top criminal investigative priority. We would like to thank all of the internet service providers and others who partnered with us to bring this matter to a quick and successful resolution.” Richard Lambert, a special agent in charge with the FBI’s Knoxville Field Division, said in a statement.

Palin, who was already under fire for allegedly using personal e-mail accounts to hide potentially damaging evidence in the Troopergate scandal, deleted the account shortly after the breach was announced by the media, allegedly on orders from the McCain campaign.

Kernell was charged with gaining unlawful access to stored communications and obtaining information from a protected computer via interstate communication, which brings a sentence of up to 5 years in prison and a quarter of a million dollar fine.