Sarah Palin
(Credit: Alaska governor's office)A grand jury in Chattanooga, Tenn., investigating who hacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail ended its meeting on Tuesday without indicting a Tennessee lawmaker's son.
Speculation on the Internet has centered on 20-year-old David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student.
On the Internet forum 4Chan.org, where the e-mail break-in was first announced, posts attributed to someone named "Rubico" more or less described how the Yahoo account had been compromised using the password recovery feature. The e-mail address used for Rubico has been linked to Kernell.
Kernell's father, Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernel, further fueled speculation last week when he confirmed his son was the subject of the investigation. On Saturday, investigators searched David Kernell's campus apartment.
Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney told the
There are mixed reports on Friday whether or not the son of a Tennessee state representative has been contacted by the FBI or Secret Service in connection with Sarah Palin's hacked Yahoo Mail account.
The father, Democratic Rep. Mike Kernell has told Knoxville News Sentinel and The Tennessean that despite a lot of online chatter, no formal contact has been made.
The person who gained access to Palin's e-mail account did so by guessing details of her life, then changed the e-mail password to "popcorn."
Using the online nickname Rubico, someone posted details of the hack to a forum on the 4Chan.org Web site starting on Tuesday. Password-protected zip files containing the contents of the now-deleted e-mail account once belonging to the Republican vice-presidential candidate have also been posted to the forum.
Subsequent posts by Rubico to the /b/ board over the last few days have provided additional insight into how the hack was carried out, although many of the posts have now been deleted.
- prev
- 1
- next
