Sarah Palin email hack
Encyclopedia
The Sarah Palin email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

 campaign when the Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 personal email account
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail is a web mail service provided by Yahoo!. It was inaugurated in 1997, and, according to comScore, Yahoo! Mail was the second largest web-based email service with 273.1 million users as of November 2010....

 of vice presidential
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...

 candidate Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...

 was subjected to unauthorized access. The hacker
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

, David Kernell, had obtained access to Palin's account by looking up biographical details such as her high school and birthdate and using Yahoo!'s account recovery for forgotten passwords. Kernell then posted several pages of Palin's email on 4chan
4chan
4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards were originally used for the posting of pictures and discussion of manga and anime...

's /b/
/b/
/b/ may refer to:* Voiced bilabial plosive * The name of the "random" board on many imageboard websites, most notably 4chan...

 board. Kernell, who at the time of the offense was a 20-year-old college student, is the son of longtime Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 state representative
Tennessee House of Representatives
The Tennessee House of Representatives is the lower house of the Tennessee General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee.-Constitutional requirements:...

 Mike Kernell
Mike Kernell
Mike Kernell is a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Kernell is married with two children....

 of Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

 and a relative of UC San Diego professor, Samuel Kernell.

He was charged in October 2008 in federal court. After he was led into the court in leg irons and handcuffs
Handcuffs
Handcuffs are restraint devices designed to secure an individual's wrists close together. They comprise two parts, linked together by a chain, a hinge, or rigid bar. Each half has a rotating arm which engages with a ratchet that prevents it from being opened once closed around a person's wrist...

, the judge released him on his own recognizance, pending trial. The incident was ultimately prosecuted in a U.S. federal court as four felony
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...

 crimes punishable by up to 50 years in federal prison. The charges were three felonies: identity theft, wire fraud, and anticipatory obstruction of justice; and one optional as felony or misdemeanor: intentionally accessing an account without authorization. Kernell pleaded not guilty to all counts.

A jury trial, featuring the testimony of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...

 and Bristol Palin
Bristol Palin
Bristol Sheeran Marie Palin is the second child and oldest daughter of former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd....

, began on April 20, 2010. On April 30, 2010, the jury found Kernell guilty on two counts: the felony of anticipatory obstruction of justice and the misdemeanor of unauthorized access to a computer. Sarah Palin posted a note on her Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 page stating that she and her family were thankful the jury had rendered a just verdict in her opinion.

Kernell was sentenced on November 12, 2010, to one year plus a day in federal custody, followed by three years of supervised release. The sentencing judge recommended that the custody be served in a halfway house
Halfway house
The purpose of a halfway house, also called a recovery house or sober house, is generally to allow people to begin the process of reintegration with society, while still providing monitoring and support; this is generally believed to reduce the risk of recidivism or relapse when compared to a...

, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons
Federal Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is a federal law enforcement agency subdivision of the United States Department of Justice and is responsible for the administration of the federal prison system. The system also handles prisoners who committed acts considered felonies under the District of Columbia's...

 sent him instead to a minimum security prison. Kernell is appealing the convictions.

Incident

Shortly after midnight on September 16, 2008, the private Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail is a web mail service provided by Yahoo!. It was inaugurated in 1997, and, according to comScore, Yahoo! Mail was the second largest web-based email service with 273.1 million users as of November 2010....

 account of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...

 was hacked by a 4chan
4chan
4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards were originally used for the posting of pictures and discussion of manga and anime...

 user. The hacker, known as "Rubico", claimed he had read Palin's personal e-mails because he was looking for something that "would derail her campaign."

After reading through Palin's emails, Rubico wrote, "There was nothing there, nothing incriminating — all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor." Rubico wrote that he used the Sarah Palin Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

 article to find Palin's birth date (one of the standard security questions
Knowledge-based authentication
Knowledge-based authentication, commonly referred to as KBA, is a method of authentication which seeks to prove the identity of someone accessing a service, such as a website. As the name suggests, KBA requires the knowledge of personal information of the individual to grant access to the protected...

 used by Yahoo!.) in "15 seconds." The hacker posted the account's password on /b/
/b/
/b/ may refer to:* Voiced bilabial plosive * The name of the "random" board on many imageboard websites, most notably 4chan...

, an image board on 4chan
4chan
4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards were originally used for the posting of pictures and discussion of manga and anime...

, and screenshot
Screenshot
A screenshot , screen capture , screen dump, screengrab , or print screen is an image taken by a computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device...

s from within the account to WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

.
A /b/ user then logged in and changed the password, posting a screenshot of his sending an email to a friend of Palin's informing her of the new password on the /b/ thread. However, he did not blank out the password in the screenshot. A multitude of /b/ users then attempted to log in with the new password, and the account was automatically locked out by Yahoo!. The incident was criticized by some /b/ users, one of whom complained that "seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically." The hacker admitted he was worried about being caught, writing "Yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, I still wanted the stuff out there ... so I posted the [information] ... and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state."

The hacker left behind traces of his activity. His IP address was logged at the proxy he used, CTunnel.com, and he also left his email address rubico10@yahoo.com when he posted at 4chan. Furthermore, the attacker revealed the original web address used by the proxy by leaving this information in the screenshot which according to experts can also help the investigation. 4chan's /b/ board is not archived, and posts are only retained for a short time. However, with the great interest surrounding the posts of Rubico, many, including wired.com, archived the original posts. The email address left behind was then connected to David Kernell through various social networking profiles where it was used, though no official investigation took place at this time.

Campaign response

John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

's campaign condemned the incident, saying it was a "shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law". Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's spokesman Bill Burton called the hacking "outrageous".

Federal investigation

The FBI and Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...

 began investigating the incident and on September 20, it was revealed that they were questioning David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...

 and the son of Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 Tennessee State Representative
Tennessee House of Representatives
The Tennessee House of Representatives is the lower house of the Tennessee General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee.-Constitutional requirements:...

 Mike Kernell
Mike Kernell
Mike Kernell is a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Kernell is married with two children....

 from Memphis. The handle used by the hacker when making his post at 4chan pointed to him, although this evidence was inconclusive because of the frequent pranks pulled at that board. The hacker's proxy service provided its logs, which pointed to Kernell's residence.

FBI agents served a federal search warrant at David Kernell's apartment in Knoxville. Agents spent two hours taking pictures of everything inside his apartment. Kernell's three roommates were also subpoenaed and expected to testify the following week in Chattanooga. The obstruction of justice charge stems from an allegation by the FBI that Kernell attempted to erase evidence of the crime from his hard drive. Kernell's father told Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...

that he was aware that his son was a suspect, but he did not ask him anything about it over concerns that he may have to testify in court.

Indictment

A second federal grand jury in Knoxville returned an indictment of Kernell on October 7, 2008. He was charged with violating and , or unlawful access to stored communications and intentionally accessing a computer without authorization across state lines, respectively. Kernell turned himself in the next day. Kernell pleaded not-guilty. The court released Kernell without bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...

. Kernell's attorney claimed that using "an e-mail address and a birth date does not constitute identity theft"; however, the court rejected that argument saying "once Governor Palin chose the Yahoo! ID gov.palin@yahoo.com, that became her unique address, and no one else could choose it."

Trial verdict

On April 30, 2010, David Kernell was found guilty on two of four counts: the felony
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...

 of anticipatory obstruction of justice by destruction of records and a misdemeanor
Misdemeanor
A misdemeanor is a "lesser" criminal act in many common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished much less severely than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences...

 of unauthorized access to a computer. The jury
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...

 acquitted him of the charge of wire fraud and was deadlocked on the charge of identity theft. In response, Palin issued a press release comparing the case to Watergate.

Prosecutors promised a retrial on the identity theft charge if Kernell was successful in his attempt at receiving a new trial. In November 2010 he was sentenced to one year and one day of prison, and three years of probation. The judge recommended that the sentence be served in a halfway house
Halfway house
The purpose of a halfway house, also called a recovery house or sober house, is generally to allow people to begin the process of reintegration with society, while still providing monitoring and support; this is generally believed to reduce the risk of recidivism or relapse when compared to a...

 rather than in a federal prison. However, the Federal Bureau of Prisons
Federal Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is a federal law enforcement agency subdivision of the United States Department of Justice and is responsible for the administration of the federal prison system. The system also handles prisoners who committed acts considered felonies under the District of Columbia's...

, which makes the ultimate determination as to where federal prisoners serve their sentence, assigned Kernell to the minimum security prison at the Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland
Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland
Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland is a Federal Bureau of Prisons correctional facility located in Summit, unincorporated Boyd County, Kentucky, southwest of Ashland and east of Lexington. FCI Ashland is located in the highlands of northeast Kentucky....

 near Ashland
Ashland, Kentucky
Ashland, formerly known as Poage Settlement, is a city in Boyd County, Kentucky, United States, nestled along the banks of the Ohio River. The population was 21,981 at the 2000 census. Ashland is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area . As of the 2000 census, the...

, Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

. Jose Santana, the chief of the BOP, said that halfway houses are for convicts who have limited skills and/or limited support from their families. Because Kernell had the support of his family and had attended a university for three years, Santana argued that he does not need to be in a halfway house. Kernell was later relocated to a halfway house.

See also

  • E-mail privacy
    E-mail privacy
    The protection of email from unauthorized access and inspection is known as electronic privacy. In countries with a constitutional guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence, email is equated with letters and thus legally protected from all forms of eavesdropping.In the United States, privacy of...

  • Secrecy of correspondence
    Secrecy of correspondence
    The secrecy of correspondence ) or literally translated as secrecy of letters, is a fundamental legal principle enshrined in the constitutions of several European countries. It guarantees that the content of sealed letters is never revealed and letters in transit are not opened by government...

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