[ISN] Accused Palin hacker has a history of intrusion

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116718

By Robert McMillan
October 8, 2008 
IDG News Service

The college student charged with illegally accessing Alaska Governor 
Sarah Palin's e-mail has been accused of computer intrusion before, 
although last time he faced only an afternoon detention.

David Kernell allegedly broke into a school server about eight years ago 
while studying at Eastern Hills Middle School in Harker Heights, Texas, 
one of his former teachers said Wednesday.

Kernell, 20, was charged Wednesday with one felony count of accessing a 
protected computer for allegedly breaking into the private Yahoo e-mail 
account of Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Some of 
Palin's private e-mail was eventually published on the Wikileaks Web 
site last month.

In a description of the attack, an anonymous hacker named "rubico," 
suspected to be Kernell, said he got into the account by guessing the 
high school where Palin met her husband and tricking Yahoo's password 
reset system into letting him into the account.

According to Kernell's former history teacher, Tracey McDaniels, this 
isn't the first time the student has been accused of using clever 
guesswork to get into a computer.

The other incident allegedly occurred around 2000, when Kernell was in 
the seventh grade. Kernell and an accomplice guessed the password to a 
server used to store teaching materials at the school and were able to 
log on to the system, McDaniels said.

[...]


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