Who is the Palin hacker?

Davey Winder
Thursday, 25 September 2008 22:26

Business IT - Networking

Already convicted and sentenced to public hanging by the right-wing political blogosphere, the supposed Palin hacker has yet to be indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. But that is not to say that the son of a Democratic state representative from Memphis is off the hook just yet...

It hardly seems that just a week ago the web exploded into life as US Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin fell victim to an email hacker.

Of course, as I suggested at the time, 'victim' is a little strong when the odour of a politician trying to avoid sensitive business emails becoming part of that public record hangs in the air.

Yet that does not excuse the hacker, or hackers, who managed to compromise the Palin Yahoo! Webmail account and post sample messages onto the web for the world to see. Not even if, as has been argued, it was a form of hacktivism with some public minded motive behind it.

The fact that this hack happened during a Presidential election campaign meant that it was never going to be handled without political interference. Be that in terms of politicians decrying the 'despicable attack on privacy' and side-stepping any awkward public record questions.

Or be it in terms of the highly charged debate that quickly followed in the blogosphere where a lynch-mob of right wing bloggers focussed on the identity of the hacker.

It did not take long for that focus to land on David Kernell, the 20 year old son of a Democratic state representative from Memphis. Not from official sources, you understand, who have not named him or anyone else as a suspect.

No, from the blogosphere itself. Blog detectives claimed he was linked to the account that bragged about the hack online, that the username of that account was also used by Kernell, that as the son of a Democrat he must have done it.

The FBI were also on the trail of Kernell, it seems, and his apartment was searched over the weekend. Ultimately this all led to him and his student flatmates being ordered to appear before a Grand Jury.

A Grand Jury which ended its sessions without indicting any of them.

Neither Kernell nor the FBI commented on the case afterwards, but prosecutors have said that the investigation is still ongoing. So if evidence is uncovered, charges could still be brought.

For now though we can get back to normality and let political bloggers decide who is guilty and who is innocent...