Incident
Shortly after midnight on September 16, 2008, the private Yahoo! Mail account of Sarah Palin was cracked by a 4chan user. The hacker, known as "Rubico", claimed he had read Palin's personal e-mails because he was looking for something that "would derail her campaign."
After reading through Palin's emails, Rubico wrote, "There was nothing there, nothing incriminating — all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor." Rubico wrote that he used the Sarah Palin Wikipedia article to find Palin's birth date (one of the standard security questions used by Yahoo!.) in "15 seconds." The hacker posted the account's password on /b/, an image board on 4chan, and screenshots from within the account to WikiLeaks. A /b/ user then logged in and changed the password, posting a screenshot of his sending an email to a friend of Palin's informing her of the new password on the /b/ thread. This man was criticized heavily by the /b/ community, for being a "white knight". However, he did not blank out the password in the screenshot. A multitude of /b/ users then attempted to log in with the new password, and the account was automatically locked out by Yahoo!. The incident was criticized by some /b/ users, one of whom complained that "seriously, /b/. We could have changed history and failed, epically." The hacker admitted he was worried about being caught, writing "Yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this sh*t ever got to the FBI I was f**ked, I panicked, I still wanted the stuff out there ... so I posted the ... and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state."
The hacker left behind traces of his activity. His IP address was logged at the proxy he used, CTunnel.com, and he also left his email address rubico10@yahoo.com when he posted at 4chan. Furthermore, the attacker revealed the original web address used by the proxy by leaving this information in the screenshot which according to experts can also help the investigation. 4chan's /b/ board is not archived, and posts are only retained for a short time. However, with the great interest surrounding the posts of Rubico, many, including wired.com, archived the original posts. The email address left behind was then connected to David Kernell through various social networking profiles where it was used, though no official investigation took place at this time.
Read more about this topic: David Kernell
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