Federal officials indicted University of Tennessee student David Kernell today, on charges of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for allegedly breaking into Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo email account.
Kernell, who is the son of Tenn. Representative Mike Kernell, turned himself in to the FBI late Tuesday afternoon. A local news report described Kernell entering a federal courthouse for his arraignment Wednesday morning in shackles, and then leaving an hour and a half later on supervised release – free without bond to continue his life as a student, but only under a number of conditions: he may use a computer only for email and schoolwork, and is forbidden from leaving the Eastern district of Tennessee without court’s written permission, among others.
According to reports, Kernell allegedly broke into two of Gov. Palin’s Yahoo email accounts mid-September, after successfully guessing answers to the “secret” questions presented by Yahoo’s password recovery system. Kernell allegedly posted details of the attack to internet imageboard 4chan.org, including screenshots of her account and, later, an explanation of the hack:
“…after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
“the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits (sic) that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for ‘palin eloped’ or some such in one of the tabs…”
The explanation continues with a follow-up, posted under the name “rubico”:
“…I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family…
“…Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked…”
Bloggers later connected the handle “rubico” to an email address belonging to a University of Tennessee student.
A data dump of Palin’s Yahoo email account later appeared on Wikileaks.
While Kernell’s indictment only mentions a single felony count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it appears that federal officials invoked the Stored Communications Act in order to elevate charges – which would ordinarily have been a misdemeanor – to felony status.
If found guilty, Kernell could face up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years’ “supervised release” – however Wired’s Threat Level notes that it is far more likely that he will receive probation, or six months’ confinement, if he has a clean record and was found to have inflicted minimal damages.