Student Hacks into Palin's Email?

Students across the nation are taking a proactive role in the 2008 Elections whether by registering to vote, campaigning for a particular candidate, or preparing to vote in November. However, there is one student who is worrying about a lot more than deciding who to vote for.
A 20-year-old University of Tennessee student is facing allegations of hacking into Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo! email account and publicly posting her messages online. What is also interesting is that the student in question is David Kernell, son of Democratic Tennessee representative, Mike Kernell. Below are three different Web sites that cover this story: cbsnews.com, foxnews.com, and mtvnews.com.

FoxNews.com
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/22/warrant-served-on-residence-of-college-student-in-palin-e-mail-hack/
This Fox News Web site was covered by one reporter and the Associated Press. It mentioned that the FBI obtained a search warrant and went to Kernell’s apartment, according to a witness, but that witness was never identified. They got that information from local TV station and NBC affiliate, WBIR TV. The witness also saw the FBI take pictures of the apartment and subpoenaed Kernell’s three roommates to testify in court this week. The article also says that the hacker used a proxy internet site, Ctunnel.com, which leaves the users anonymous, to hack into the email account. The hacker left a trail, which Gabriel Ramuglia, the 25-year-old man who runs the site, is working with the FBI to identify the hacker. The article makes it clear that it is an ongoing investigation and that Kernell is just a suspect. However, at the end of the article is another source, whom Fox News does not tie to anything else in the story and also does not clarify if it was a second-hand source or if they interviewed him. A security engineer for Arbor Networks Inc., Jose Nazario said that members of the group Anonymous were involved, “Anonymous sort of takes pride in doing this publicly and pissing people off. There are other groups that do this, but they aren’t as public about it,” Nazario said. Fox News quotes Nazario as saying Anonymous is a “loose network of a few dozen people who live in the U.S. and abroad,” however that station should have researched it them selves. This article also mentions that Palin used this email at times to conduct sate business, where her critics wanted an investigation to see if she used it for “improper activity.”

MTV.com

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1595343/20080922/story.jhtml
This site had basically the same information as Fox News, but it left out the information about Anonymous, which I believe was smarter since it was shady information. This article goes into more detail about where Palin’s email messages were posted, which was Gawker Web site, and also mentioned that Kernell and his friends attempted to flee when the FBI arrived at their apartment, information that Fox News left out. They also mentioned that Wire Magazine reported that the confessions the hacker left behind about hacking into the email account used the name “Rubico” which was quickly associated with Kernell, who had used the name “Rubicox” in previous blogs. MTV news also included that hack inspired another one on Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s Web site. I found it interesting that MTV news mentioned this yet Fox News did not. Also, this site reported that the Associated Press initially did not hand over copies of Palin’s email messages to the FBI, more information left out by Fox News, probably because AP contributed to that story.

CBSNews.com
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/22/politics/horserace/entry4469760.shtml
This article also mentions who David Kernell’s father is, a fact too important to be left out in any of the articles. CBS said that the hacker used Palin’s date of birth and zip code to reset her password on Yahoo! which the previous two articles also had mentioned. It was also the only Web site that included a quote from Mike Kernell, the state’s Democratic representative, who told AP, “I had nothing to do with it, I had no knowledge or anything." The previous articles didn’t even mention that Mike Kernell spoke to AP. CBS also attributes “experts say the hacker left an easy trail to follow” yet they do not clarify who the experts were. This site used CNET and AP as its sources.

Overall these Web sites each brought something new to the story, but I felt that the quote and source from the Fox News story regarding the group Anonymous. Fox News took the source’s word about what it was without researching it afterwards, if so, they would have found it’s a very large group more than just “a few dozen” members, that to a myriad of activities. Also, these articles make it clear that David Kernell is only a suspect at this point and that the FBI is still investigating the matter.