Good drama

Mr. Kernal should QQ more in the movie.

Dan! Goodin! Has! Clue!

"we have the startlingly weak security of Yahoo mail to thank and someone unscrupulous enough to exploit it."

And you didn't blame Microsoft for it. I have hope for you yet. This is more than I can say for commentary on the CBC website about the same hack attack.

Flee to Mootxico, man!

"And it's only a matter of time before Republicans claim the hack was part of a secret Democratic operation."

Secret operation which posts a tell-all to quadchan. Might be plausible to voters who know that the Internets are full of terrists and offensive language.

Anyway, here's hoping the "secret operative" is not shifted to Guantanamo at once or that the "terrorist" adjective does not appear in his indictment, adding years and years at Club Fed.

Hmmm

Hmmm , a good thing all of Sarah's shotguns are currently pointed in the A***se of a potential future son in law whose current my space profile shows him to be a high potential runner at the wedding altar , otherwise ouch !

But it does show the the absolute hypocritical unethical values and double standard rules that all repuke elected officials live by , for the only real reforms they ever do at both local , state and federal level is to replace existing piglets at the money trough with their own variety! Alas the ever faithful party lambs claim wow look at all those reforms done by this idiot till the next idiot pops up to do the same thing in the same way and as for previous idiot "wow what a greedy scumbag !" becomes their new war cry .

Merkin politics is a truly a strange business indeed , for Sarah Palin on her election platform claimed her government would be open and accountable at all levels and she does the exact opposite and has do so since 1992 which is no real surprise to the smarter residents of a town she has driven almost to the point of bankruptcy . It is sad to see how the ever dumb and stupid loyal Alaskan rednecks are flocking to her side to defend that which is indefensible and very hypocritical and this data should have been readily available to the general public under the FOI laws !

Choices ?

In 3....2...1...

/cues the inevitable wave of repukes thumping their chests and claiming it was all at the behest of Obama and his people. All the while ignoring that currently it sounds like it was simply one misguided person attempting some sort of "public service" to disclose palin using a yahoo account for government work. Not some grand conspiracy on the part of the democrats.

Coat, cus at this point I'm ready to either see the american people pull their collective heads out their asses or just leave.

Surprise! This happens more often than you think.

Government officials using their personal Yahoo or Gmail accounts for official business happens more often than you think. In fact, while working with an (unnamed US government agency), there were repeated security violations as officials at all levels refused to use secure channels for E-mail communication because of the inconvenience of using a secure network.

I'm not surprised her E-mail was hacked and not surprised with it's content.

I'm Spartacus

Of course, it's always worth bearing in mind the disclaimer on /b/:

"The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.

Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."

Anonymous strikes again!

I figured something was going to happen to them, after watching them for years....

Duh!

"have the startlingly weak security of Yahoo mail to thank and someone unscrupulous enough to exploit it. Who would have thought?"

Paris would have thought about it!

But then again if you can conduct THE PUBLIC'S business on a private (hidden!) account - who is to say what is right.

Rocks, glass houses... Pot, kettle...

But then, that second one is probably racist. I suppose the difference is that Mr. Presidential Candidate only cavorts with those who skirt the law, thus giving him plausible deniability. While Mrs. Vice-Presidential Candidate improperly uses a third-party email system to conduct state business.

Not knowing much about the "open government" bit versus her Yahoo! email, I am curious to find what the law states which would specifically disallow that. Afterwards, I will have to see if I can find anything on the books about taking campaign contributions from a government-subsidized business as it falls through the crapper.

Paris, looking for the lesser of two evils.

Shock! News!

Politician ignores laws whilst shouting about their enforcement on the rest of the mortals...

... thought that was a pre-requisite?

Also, equal protection under the law?

Have you ever seen anyone other than Rep viceprez candidate, who, having her email account hacked in, is being helped by various federal agencies in finding the perp? Some are more equal than others it seems.

@ In 3....2...1... by AC

"american people pull their collective heads out their asses"

Why would the American people put their collective heads in their donkey in the first place?

The Equus asinus population must be huge in America.

towards the light..

Funny, I thought McCain would be closer to god then she would be.

Hat, Coat, And JESUS SANDALS!

Hacker????

The use of the word hacker is way over the top; it creates a nice headline and a lot of 'media buzz', but reading the article it is a misnomer.

If the facts mentioned in the article are correct, no specialized technical knowledge and/or techniques have been used. Instead Yahoo!'s public login and user identification pages have been used in a correct manner, i.e. by entering certain data in the available text boxes.

The data was not gathered in any 'dark or evil' way, but was collected from open sources (presumably) using nothing else than the proper channels (search engines).

Calling somebody who uses the available Yahoo! pages to login on another's account a hacker, would indicate that anybody who successfully logs in on his/her own Yahoo! account a Whiz Kid ... I am sure everybody agrees that that most likely is not the right or accurate description of a typical Yahoo! user ... or Palin in this case.

The point where the kid went astray was after he successfully logged in. He should have stopped there, since all actions before that might have been classified as misbehavior. With a good lawyer he could have made the case that he only used the publicly available data and did not (technically) misuse or hack computers and/or services.

Hacker? Nahhhh, come on!

Sarah Palin is fair game

Well done that lad!

Anything that makes the silly bint look even more ridiculous than she already is can't be a bad thing.

Cold Shower?

"promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower."

Doesn't taking a cold shower normally imply you're trying to "calm yourself down".

I wonder what he saw in those emails that got him so excited - Dick Smith employee style amateur pr0n starring Ms. Palin perhaps?

This could be the real story!!

@dv

I love a conspiracy as much as the next man, but I would imagine the reason the Feds are involved is that as well as Rep viceprez candidate she is the governor of Alaska?

Supporter of Obama

A Democratic State Senator supports the Democratic nominee for president? Well knock me down and call me Nancy - whoever would have suspected that?

For the love of Hillary, will those evil bastards in the Democratic party stop at nothing to get Obama elected? Not even getting their own state party members to support him?

@Spartacus

> his 20-year-old son, David, is the individual

> 20-year-old son, David

> David

Anonymous Coward because.. well, you know

Anyone dumb enough.......

to use 419 e-mail deserves all they get....

I always maintained anyone with a yahoo email address was up to no good.

You have to be an idiot...

... to fill in the security questions with guessable data when registering an account.

Paris, coz even she knows this.

David

For those who are not "down with the kids" there is a recurring joke on 4chan that Anonymous' real name (as it is only one person, not a group or organisation or shit like that) is David.

Coincidence or something more humorous?

No story here

Where are the nudes! Palin is a MILF and I invoke Rule 34 on that ass!

...to sort of quote matt damon in his interview.

Palin is a dangerous woman, she is 1 in 3 chance of becoming president, follow the actuary tables and MCCain won't survive his first term (he is that old)

She is a mayor of a small town in nowhere alaska, then she becomes governor.

And as he said, "I want to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were around 4000 years ago, because this woman will have to go against putin and has the nuclear codes."

We should all be frickin' scared of her and her creationist beliefs.

Page 5 - top right

http://issue.monkeymag.co.uk/1L48c91d2ad412f012.cde

@Chris

Well, there's one way to shut her up!

Fnar, fnar!

@JonB

Anonymous isn't just the anti-Scientology stuff.

Anonymous was around before then. (In fact, there's horribly amusing in-fighting about Chanology between various factions of Anonymous.)

P.S. Where's the dead vulture, dammit?

Stop calling it a hack!

It was a quick witted but ultimately stupid person saw a non-technical flaw in a system and took advantage of it! That's not a hack in my book, that's simply using the system as it was designed to work.

This was known about 2 days ago on Slashdot, where a link to the full transcript appeared showing that someone had simply followed the standard procedures to reactivate the email account, then posted the details on some board before crapping themselves about what they had done. Then the press got hold of it and blew out of all proportion saying an international gang of hackers broke into a politician's private email account.

Why let facts stand in the way of a good story, eh?!

Why the FBI are involved.

Apart from the fact that hacking is dealt with under federal wire-tapping law, because the "criminal act" spans several States - the Yahoo servers are in a different State to the confused-individual/hacker/moron, and the victim is in a third State. That makes it a federal case, hence the FBI involvement. Nothing to do with Palin pulling rank to get the FBI on the kid, just the same response any other US citizen would get if the crime had involved more than one State. At least we can rest assured the Dems won't be claiming Palin can't use email, maybe they'll actually get down to debaiting real issues rather than squealing about pigs and lipstick.

The unfortunate Mike Kernell (what a name, if only he worked with Linux!) had to come out and shop his son as not to do so would have led to calls of a Dem cover-up. Kernell will probably have to stand down over the issue, so the idiotic son has failed to smear Palin and probably removed his own father from office - smart kid! With friends and supporters like that, Obama might as well just pack up now and go back to Hawaii (or Kenya).

@! Mark! For! Jealousy! Commentary!

"Tell me, do you intend to give ANY reasonableness to the situation?"

After all the Dan Goodin bashing I did here, I figured some encouragement was appropriate. And yes, a comment board on the CBC web site got filled with, "don't use Windows, then!!!!111one" postings following this Palin hack story.

And yes, you ARE just jealous that I can use Windows with impunity and you can't! :-p

Seriously, Dan, thanks for avoiding a knee-jerk article.

Reminds me of this photo:

Serious business.

http://www.palmettoscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/internets.jpg