Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Sarah Palin's email account hacked

Her Yahoo! Email account was hacked by the same guy who's waged a one-man cyber war with the Scientologists.

The cache of stolen data contains five screenshots from Palin's account, including the text of an e-mail exchange with Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress.

Another screenshot shows Palin's inbox and a third shows the text of an e-mail from Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor's Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007.

This is pretty boring, but raises some interesting questions:
  • What, oh what, would be the reaction if someone did this to Senator Obama?
  • What is the Governor of a state doing using email from Yahoo!?
  • If it is true that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," what does this say about this political season?
Overall, this seems way less of a hassle for her than most of what we've seen so far.

However, unlike the Scientologists, the Secret Service is investigating. It will be interesting to see what comes from this.

UPDATE 17 September 2008 20:14: Looks like password guessing. Very 1994. How immature are you?

2 comments:

TOTWTYTR said...

When, not if, they catch him, he's in for some serious problems. I'd expect that someone will want to make an example of him. I'd guess he'll do five years or so in Club Fed.

I think that both Democrats and Republicans have an interest in discouraging, in no uncertain terms, this sort of thing.

I'm sort of reactionary, but I think that the death penalty isn't too extreme either.

Borepatch said...

Via Insty, Van der Leun has an interesting take.

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/palin_should_gi.php

It would be very interesting to see a President Palin issue a pardon.

That said, the media reaction is certainly muted compared to what would have happened if the son of a Republican pol had broken into Obama's email.