VP hopeful could face criminal charges after hackers access her personal e-mail account

Moses Utomi / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

The Internet is serious business. Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin learned this fact the hard way as hackers broke into her private Yahoo e-mail account on Tuesday Sept. 16.

Members from Anonymous, a cyber vigilante group based on the infamous 4Chan forums, gained access to the account gov.palin@yahoo.com and posted screenshots of their activity. Personal emails, family photos and contact list information were all posted for public viewing. One screenshot shows a draft e-mail from Palin’s account to one of her campaign aides, Ivy Frye. In it, a member of the group attempts to resolve the situation:

Dear Ivy,

You don’t know me, but I am part of an internet group. We call ourselves anonymous. This e-mail was hacked by anonymous, but I took no part in that. I simply got the password back, and changed it so no further damage could be done. Please get in contact with Sarah Palin and inform her the new password on this account is: samsonite1.

Thank you and best wishes,
The good Anonymous”

Once the screen shot was viewed, Palin’s account became a free-for-all for hackers itching to change the password for their own personal use. The overload of traffic triggered a 24-hour security freeze on the account and it was closed early the following morning.

The security breach had far reaching consequences for Palin. Contact information for her family members were also leaked, including her husband’s e-mail address and her eldest daughter’s phone number that was supposedly dialed by some of the hackers.

Furthermore, Palin could face charges for conducting official state business on her personal, unarchived e-mail account. Her critics have accused her of using her personal account to avoid freedom of information laws and some are trying to force her to release over one thousand e-mails she withheld from a public records request.

The individual who was the alleged mastermind behind the hack made a post on the 4Chan forums detailing the steps he took. According to the poster, named rubico, the attack was surprisingly simple, after the password recovery was re-enabled, 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 two zip codes (thanks online postal service!). The second question was somewhat harder. The question was where did you meet your spouse? I found out later through more research that they met in high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on Wasilla high, so I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…”

The FBI has launched an investigation into the attack by using the information provided by the poster. Threat Level, a blog at wired.com, reports that the name rubico has been connected to a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student whose father is a Democratic state representative.

Expect an arrest in the coming days, but it’s unlikely the hacker will face any severe charges.