Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

http://s405.photobucket.com/albums/pp134/anoncrack/

by vaksel • 18 years ago

44 73 18 years ago

s405.photobucket.com

vaksel5• 18 years ago

Thats why you need better security settings if you are in public office, considering all the secret questions one might ask about you to retrieve your password can be found on your wiki page

steelhive• 18 years ago

Yeah. You think she'd have more security experience being so near Russia. :-)

vaksel5• 18 years ago

well by that logic she is a security expert because she filled out a "Lost Password" questionnaire that yahoo does.

rbanffy2• 18 years ago

You shouldn´t use your Yahoo account for work. Period.

OTOH, if she uses Yahoo for her personal stuff only, then it´s just a common privacy violation and should be prosecuted as such.

cortfr• 18 years ago

The url in the pictures is cfunnel.com.

mileszs• 18 years ago

ctunnel.com is a proxy. Not that it couldn't be a hoax, but that is not evidence of it being a hoax. Simple attempt to protect his/her identity.

vaksel5• 18 years ago

smart person, considering Palin is known for being very vindictive.

"Hello anonymous? Good news! The IRS is going to audit you for the past 20 years"

mynameishere2• 18 years ago

(non-)Anonymous is setting himself up for the federal pen.

josefresco• 18 years ago

Completely off topic but...

Hah, notice in one of the screenies the 'hacker' is playing Counter-Strike:Source, which ties in nicely with today's other big story (Google/Valve)

kul• 18 years ago

why isn't this bigger news?

Goronmon• 18 years ago

I'm curious...why should it be bigger news?

tptacek10• 18 years ago

Because it's alleged that she funneled government email through private email accounts deliberately to avoid transparency laws --- in other words, to prevent citizens from learning about her on-the-job correspondance --- only to have the raw contents of those mail spools dumped to the entire Internet.

It touches on a political controversy (running the State of Alaska through Yahoo may be illegal) and involves a seperate crime commited for publicity and political purposes. It implicates the security of hosted email providers in general, and begs the question of how confidential government emails could have been so insecure in the first place.

I'm betraying opinions that I'd like to keep close, because this hasn't been authenticated. If it is, I'd say it's huge news. What a fuckup.

vaksel5• 18 years ago

from what I understand this is her private email account, not the un-"official" yahoo account

mlLK• 18 years ago

how is this not plastered all over NPR?

ComputerGuru3• 18 years ago

Photobucket's pulled the images. Anyone have a cache somewhere?

sd• 18 years ago

http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008

ComputerGuru3• 18 years ago

Thanks, much appreciated.

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

Doesn't work...

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

Here are the links

http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/wp-content/uploads/2008/...

vaksel5• 18 years ago

here is someone's blog post with a few more pictures, and her contacts list.

http://gawker.com/5051193/sarah-palins-personal-email-accoun...

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

I'm no fan of Palin, but I think it's pretty low of Gawker to gain page views by posting the contents of her personal emails, as well as the personal photos. Apparently privacy rights don't matter anymore.

hugh7• 18 years ago

Agreed.

There's not even an attempt at a "Well usually we wouldn't publish someone's personal email but in this particular case we think it's justified because [insert justification here]"

I guess I may be expecting too much of a site called "gawker" though. Still, here's hoping that someone (not me!) hacks Barack Obama's personal email soon so we can check whether they treat it the same way.

ckinnan2• 18 years ago

McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Manager Rick Davis: 'This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.'

jonknee2• 18 years ago

If it was just personal emails you'd be right, but she broke the law and conducted state business with her Yahoo account. While it was reported before, this confirms it. I'd say since she routinely used her Yahoo account for state business it should be public, just like her main account.

miked5• 18 years ago

Please provide: 1) legal citations to the Alaska and/or Federal laws that say an elected official may not use a personal email account to conduct business. 2) links to the email(s) showing evidence that she broke a law. 3) an explanation as to why you are angry about a claim, stated without any evidence, that she broke the law, but quite happy about an ideological friend who has clearly broken the law and violated someone's privacy; and how you justify the difference. 4) an explanation as to why those people you agree with are innocent even when they've obviously committed a crime, but those you disagree with are guilty until proven innocent. 5) the name of a good civil defense attorney. Public accusations of the criminality of the unconvicted are legally actionable. 6) an explanation as to why murderers should be able to walk free if evidence was illictly obtained, but for the most smeared Presidential-ticket candidate in the last century no accusation is too baseless or low.

tptacek10• 18 years ago

Michael Scherer at Time just wrote that his sources confirmed that this isn't a hoax. Epic fuckup.

ckinnan2• 18 years ago

Gov. Palin is under the protection of the Secret Service, and it is a crime committed in the context of disrupting a U.S. election, so the full investigative power of the federal government will be brought to bear. Plus I suspect Yahoo will be very cooperative.

jhancock2• 18 years ago

yes, the long arm of the arm will have its day on this one. However, it is important to remember that most/all revolutionary behavior involves breaking the law. I'm not saying this was an appropriate thing to do. But obviously, whoever did this thought it worth the almost certain chance they would go to jail for what they did.

So, who's the better American? The ones who violate the law and try to effect change or the peanut gallery that kick back and do nothing? Sure, you can say, "I vote". That is something. Its just that others obviously feel more action (even illegal actions) is required to effect change.

Note: I am a member of the peanut gallery. I just bitch and vote. But it is key hacker news that we are at a point in our history where others are deciding to take alternative action.

hugh7• 18 years ago

Oh yeah, hoo-fricking-ray for that brave 4chan script kiddie, heroicially giving up his own freedom so that the rest of us could see more of Sarah Palin's family photos.

More likely this particular asshole is just an idiot who didn't think through the consequences of his actions. He just thought it'd be funny.

kennyroo• 18 years ago

At least she has e-mail. John McCain's messages are delivered by horse.

rgrieselhuber• 18 years ago

The thing that struck me in this is that being a Republican politician generally means you're going to have more people who know how to do this stuff against you than for you.

I'm not saying this is ok or making a political statement - just an observation.

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

I got a lot of mixed feelings about this one.

First -- it's a crime, plain and simple. Somebody should go to jail. Sites trafficking in stolen goods should be charged.

Second -- glad it happened in September. Can you imagine something like this happening, only in the last week of the election? Heck, you could put any kind of flamebait stuff you wanted in the screen shots. It doesn't even have to be real. It could easily throw the election and you're left with a mess and nobody to blame for it.

Third -- How was the system breached?

This is definitely hacker news. As an example, I had an idea last year for a site/app to keep track of breaking election-year news. As the emotional juices roil in the 40% of die-hards on each side, there's this incredible thirst for up-to-the-date, cutting-edge news and insights. It doesn't get much more up-to-date and insightful than reading the candidate's email. (Note earlier comment about legality, though)

Where there's a great thirst, somebody is going to be selling trips to the water fountain. Not only is there lots of money in this right now, elections are predictable, repeatable events and piggybacking on people's emotional investment in them is only going to get more and more profitable.

froo• 18 years ago

Third -- How was the system breached?

Dunno, I just went and quickly braved 4chan (I know... I feel so dirty) to see if anyone was linking anything. They had some rapidshare links up (a 1.4 mb and 1.1mb one).

Am grabbing now just to see what they are... I'm curious if there is anymore info on this.

mynameishere2• 18 years ago

It was a straighforward dictionary hack--her password was "popcorn".

time_management• 18 years ago

This is indeed an epic fail... for, as it were, the Democrats.

Unfortunately, this only has the potential to help the Republicans. Let's assume the 98th-percentile scenario, from a Democratic perspective: a few mildly inappropriate emails are discovered via the hack. To us, meaning those who post on Hacker News, transparency and propriety matter a great deal, because we care about such "academic" issues. However, the average American (who spends 3 hours per workday surfing the internet, despite having signed an agreement that work computers were "for official use only") isn't going to be shocked or disgusted that a governor has sent a few emails in violation of propriety; it can easily be spun as a "one of us" crime, and the hackage will do nothing less than engender sympathy for Mrs. Palin.

hugh7• 18 years ago

Let's assume the 98th-percentile scenario, from a Democratic perspective: a few mildly inappropriate emails are discovered via the hack.

I'm expecting a bunch of things to be "discovered" in the next few days. Most will be fakes -- some obvious, some ambiguous. There might be some real ones mixed in there somewhere, but how are we going to know one way or the other?

In the end, everyone will believe what they want to believe.

petercooper• 18 years ago

Anonymous anonymous, or Anti-Scientology Anonymous?

ryanspahn• 18 years ago

So is there anything truly damning here or is it just a publicity stunt?

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

As an aside, I'm coming to this story 18 hours late, but every single link posted on this page, is down. Wikileaks is even down. All of it.

I feel bad for the script kiddies that did this. They are going to get Mitnicked on this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

General law enforcement in the US is crap when it comes to computer crime, but if you get the boys at the NSA, the FBI or at Secret Service interested, you're going to be spending a lot of quality time exercising in a little room with metal bars for a wall. And, if you have any sort of "ideological" basis for your acts, I wouldn't be surprised to hear the word "terrorism" creep into the DA's vocabulary at some point during your legal proceedings.

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

Funny, I really don't feel bad for people who break into other people's accounts and steal their information.

Whom I feel bad for is all the regular folks that had the same thing happen and are not running for office.

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

I'm sorry for the confusion. I'm not endorsing that people break into other people's accounts. What I am saying, is that I don't really think that the script kiddies that (I'm assuming) did this truly realize the extent of the deep guano that they've just gotten themselves into.

I won't feel bad that these people get punished for their crimes. I will feel bad if these people have charges of "terrorism" brought against them, which I suspect might happen.

Anonymous hacks one of Gov. Sarah Palin's yahoo email accounts

Related Stories