Hacker impersonated Palin, stole e-mail password

AP via Breitbart ^ | September 18, 2008 | Ted Bridis

[rightwingintelligentsia]

WASHINGTON (AP) - Details emerged Thursday behind the break-in of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, including a first-hand account suggesting it was vulnerable because a hacker was able to impersonate her online to obtain her password.

[Slapshot68]

This hacker is liberalism personified. They have no life, no ideas, no identity of their own so they have to mimic, then steal, from others to be “validated.”

[MrB]

All collectivist ideology, as is evil itself,

are parasitic.

They cannot exist alone and must suck the life out of good ideologies.

[brytlea]

The break-in of Palin's private account is especially significant because Palin sometimes uses non-government e-mail to conduct state business. Previously disclosed e-mails indicate her administration embraced Yahoo accounts as an alternative to government e-mail, which could possibly be released to the public under Alaska's Open Records Act.

Is there any proof of this? If not, isn't it time for the public to punish news outlets who print unsubstantiated rumors as truth?

susie

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Hm. Criminal impersonation and identify theft.

[brytlea]

I hope he’s got his panties in a wad right about now. I hope they find him and prosecute to the fullest.
susie

[BGHater]

‘impersonate her online to obtain her password.’

Classic social engineering hack.

[PLD]

Friends,
>
>
> PBS has a short video on Sarah Palin on their website. Also
> included is a
> poll that asks: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be VP?
>
>
>
> I logged on a few minutes ago and
> 34
> % percent had voted
> YES,
> 66
> % NO.
>
>
>
> Let’s turn this around..... You don’t have to give
> your name or
> email address in order to vote. It’s very simple.
>
>
> Here’s the link:
>
>
>
>
> http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html
>

[MozarkDawg]

What started as a prank was cut short because of panic over the possibility the FBI might investigate, the hacker wrote.

Might? Dork, the Secret Service WILL ... get ready for the knock on your door from the guys with the dark glasses and funny watches. You are in for a serious *talking to*, they don't care your party politics.

[edcoil]

If 34% of democrats believe she is, Obama is in trouble. Very few republicans and reasonable people listen to PBS.

[timestax]

I think the poll has been closed as the number has NOT changed in two days.

[Publius6961]

What genius wrote this story?

What difference does it make how the criminal hacked her email account?

Would it be admirable, or any less a crime if the crook had borrowed sophisticated equipment from Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible?

Sometimes I can't believe the idiocy...

[RetSignman]

Tina Fey?

[A_Former_Democrat]

You nailed it.

It’s a shame that the liberals have made a sham out of the political process.

And out of everything else as well.

[Dr. Sivana]

Very few republicans and reasonable people listen to PBS.

I listen to NPR frequently. I think I am reasonable.

However, I read it the same way that one might read Pravda. This morning, for instance, they did profiles of Biden and Palin. Biden's piece was all puffy, emphasizing his frequent references to (what he considers to be) his Catholic identity when campaigning in the upper midwest. When they got to Palin, the feature was mostly critical, and they had no problem finding women who were critical of Palin at the U of Mo--Kansas City. Fortunately, they were honest enough to inform the listener that critic #1 was African-American, and that critic #2 was a "Women's Studies" professor.

These features give me an idea as to where the left is going next.

[Continental Soldier]

This case will be an interesting test for the Secret Service. Can they catch the wrongdoers? Or will they be defeated by clever defiance and political correctness? If they succeed, the wrongdoers should go to prison,where they can enjoy their liberal inclinations. If they don’t succeed, we should all catch our breath for what is coming next!

[Brookhaven]

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Loose lips sink ships.

In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Hacker impersonated Palin, stole e-mail password, MozarkDawg wrote:
“What started as a prank was cut short because of panic over the possibility the FBI might investigate, the hacker wrote.

Might? Dork, the Secret Service WILL ... get ready for the knock on your door from the guys with the dark glasses and funny watches. You are in for a serious *talking to*, they don’t care your party politics.”

This is a case where politicians of both parties will close ranks to protect themselves. Neither Dems or Repubs want to risk having their e-mails hacked.

*talking to* code for getting royaly screwed. Whoever did this will be made an example of to.

[astyanax]

The F.B.I. is now involved.
Article has a good description of how he did it.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9115099&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8

[Neidermeyer]

because a hacker was able to impersonate her online to obtain her password
**************************************************
I’d bet 10 to 1 that someone at Yahoo offered the password to the Obama campaign or that this kid knew someone working there.. the YHOO people are pretty much as liberal as the GOOG people.

[jrawk]

WHAT did Obama know, and WHEN did he know it?

[CodeToad]

That boy is TOAST!

[CitizenM]

What I don’t understand about how he did this is: When setting a new password, the email service usually sends you an email (to that addy) notifying you that your password has been re-set. It asks if you did this. At least that is what I have always experienced. Also, when you sign up for a Yahoo email account, you are asked for an alternate email address also. And the same question is sent to that alternate email address. Didn’t Sarah see that question in her email before the person was able to continue? I thought no one could get into the email until you confirmed that you had re-set it. Perhaps I am wrong. Obviously I am wrong, LOL...but it still confuses me.

[edcoil]

I listen to NPR but only for the international news. I believe however I noted PBS.

[Dr. Sivana]

True, I think of them as peas in a pod, under the rubric of public broadcasting.

[William Tell]

CitizenM said: "When setting a new password, the email service usually sends you an email (to that addy)"

The challenge in this case is that Yahoo is the supplier of the email account which is to have its password changed. It does no good to send an email confirmation to an email address if that email address itself can then be accessed by the changed password.

The personal questions are an attempt to have a non-email dependent way to change the email password. I have several passworded web accounts that do just as you say; that is, they attempt to confirm my identity using personal information I have already supplied and then send an email with a code used to enable the new password.

But If I have to change my email password, I must be able to login first using the existing password. The only alternative to that is to call my internet service provider, identify myself satisfactorily, and then request that they reset my password.

Yahoo's system is designed to permit them to supply perhaps hundreds of thousands of email accounts without requiring human intervention to update passwords when a customer forgets theirs. It's a very much less secure way to get more done, but at the expense of customers like Palin who get hacked.

[astyanax]

That boy is TOAST!

Concur! Secret Service and F.B.I.
Last thing you want to be is a "person of interest."

[CodeToad]

Or a “target”.

[astyanax]

Common sense should have told him he was painting a big bull’s eye on his forehead...

[sarasmom]

Best net coverage as of right now is on Michelle Malkins blog, and LGF.

Also appears there are early indications the “hacker” is the probably the son of a Tennessee (D) House member.Not certain if that is Fed or State House, and reports are not quite substantial enough for me to name names, although they are provided elsewhere.

[jrawk]

My post of course is the meme from watergate directed towards Nixon. The accusation, the question is so serious,regardless of evidence, by modern press theory it must be asked and investigated.

You are quoting correctly what happens when you forget your password.

The hacker used what happens when you forget your username AND password. You are first asked the three security questions. When all three are answered correctly, and you get limited tries to do this in a period of time. You are given your ID and prompted to reset your password.

I just did it for my own account. It is that simple. You never have to enter the previous password. That of course is because it is assumed you forgot it anyhow.

I think this whole thing went down over a 3 hour period early in the morning. So by the time anyone was awake to detect. It was over.

— lates

[jrawk]

CORRECTION:

This is the scenario when you know your ID but lost password.

Then answer I can not access my primary email.

Answer security question correctly

You can now reset your password.

Done. you now have access.

Yes both the account and the primary account get the confirmation email. But you are already logged in. Believe it or not the yahoo account can be made the primary.

But the confirmation email had no impact, as I stated above, it was all over by 4AM.

— sorry for the first error.
— I have now reset my password twice... :)

[weegee]

His father is a Democrat politician. This hits home.

The culture of corruption. The party of Democrat thugs. The kind who slash GOP van tires on election day.

But the media was more concerned with who was behind the Obama “smear” email.

[weegee]

Last week the Left was also bragging about having Sarah Palin’s social security number. To do so would also be criminal. The partisan media won’t investigate those claims (even though 4 digits were released).

[jrawk]

Obama’s campaign, for all of the people praising it is one of the worst run I have witnessed in my short life. Knock on wood, I see a land slide in the making.

Case in point. You have all of this news breaking, and on the same day you have O’Biden out there giving a stump speach that incites people to stand up and argue, to get in people’s faces. They are no longer tacitly encouraging this madness. This stuff doesn’t win elections and the Clinton machine is not delivering this year. And we have seen what the JFK’s can do with John Kerry. (who served in Vietnamn) With Palin on this ticket... with Nader out there in a few states. O’Biden is going to hit hard.

Get ready for Clinton V. Palin in 2012.

— lates
— jrawk

[brytlea]

I heard that last night. Wow.
susie

[timestax]

I’m thinking ,maybe, of sending some Hamilton County Tennessee private detectives to check out the closets of the Kernell family to look for any and all skeletons. yep yep 10/4 70 posted on Friday, September 19, 2008 9:21:38 PM by timestax

[Yardstick]

However, I read it the same way that one might read Pravda.

Exactly. I consider it valuable opposition research, and it's nice with no commercials and interesting musical breaks between segments. Rush at lunch and NPR on the drive home gives me a pretty good picture of what's going on.