A federal grand jury convened today in Chattanooga,
Tennessee to investigate State Rep. Mike
Kernell’s son David Kernell’s alleged involvement in the hacking of Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s
e-mail. The judge has adjourned for the day however, and no indictment has been
so far made.
The 22 year old youth, a student of Tennessee University, and who uses the online
handle Rubico10, has been pointed out by internet bloggers as the selfsame
Rubico who bragged on 4chan.org forums about being the hacker who used publicly
available information to answer security questions in order to reset the
password for Gov. Palin’s Yahoo email account on September 17.
Although David is not officially a suspect in the case, he
has been subpoenaed along with his three room-mates to answer questions before
the jury today. The services of attorney Wade V. Davies of Knoxville, Tenn.
have been retained for the Democrat state representative’s son.
Mr. Davies had this to say: "I have been asked by the
Kernell family to represent their son, David. This is a difficult time for
David and his family. The Kernell family wants to do the right thing, and they
want what is best for their son. We are confident that the truth will emerge as
we go through the process. David is a decent and intelligent young man, and I
look forward to assisting him during this difficult period."
David’s father made a statement last week to The
Tennessean in which he confirmed that his son was indeed the Rubico that
bloggers were connecting to the identity of the hacker.
Log checks made by Gabriel Ramuglia, owner of Ctunnel.com,
the proxy service used by the hacker to mask his identity, traced the
interloper’s IP to pavlovmedia.com, an internet service provider that services
both Illinois and Tennessee, and while this makes it possible for the hack to
have originated from Kernell’s apartment, it certainly does not prove it, as
the area covered by the ISP is too broad.
The hacker, who called himself Rubico on 4chan forums,
described how by no more than 45 minutes of research that used publicly
available data that he gathered through Wikipedia, Google and the U.S. postal
service (for determining zip codes) he was able to provide the correct answers
for all the questions that the Yahoo password reset forum demanded.
He reset the password to ‘popcorn’, and then read all of
Palin’s emails. He was looking for any sort of incriminating evidence,
something that would derail Palin’s campaign. Disappointingly, he found
nothing. It was then that he panicked, because he realized that he had used
only one proxy to cover his tracks. He posted the password on 4chan.org and
unplugged his internet cable. Subsequently, a myriad of 4chan users tried to
log in with the password, prompting the automatic Yahoo lockdown of Governor
Palin’s account.
Ultimately, it was this panic, and his failure to remember
to block out the Ctunnel URL from his screenshots that are giving investigators
solid leads to finding him. If this person is David Kernell, we won’t know
until investigations progress, so we’ll have to wait and see.
