Posted on 12/09/2009 12:19:26 PM PST by Gomez
Lawyers for Sarah Palin webmail hack suspect David Kernell claim his PC was infected with spyware.
The contention may be used at trial to support arguments that the 21-year-old student son of a Tennessee Democrat politician was not personally responsible for the hack on a Yahoo! account maintained by the former Alaskan governor, which was traced back to an IP address used by Kernell.
The content of emails and family photos were uploaded onto 4Chan during last year's presidential election campaign. The webmail account was compromised after hackers reset Palin's password using biographical info that was far from hard to figure out from publicly available information.
Palin described the incident as hugely disruptive to the Republican presidential campaign in her recently published book.
Lawyers acting for Kernell claim his Acer laptop was infected with unspecified malware in a motion filed on 30 November. However, the malware involved has been isolated and subjected to scrutiny, Security Blanket reports.
The so-called Trojan defence was successfully used by accused hacker Aaron Caffrey, an Asperger's sufferer charged with using systems run by the Port of Houston to run a DDoS attack, crashing servers in Texas in the process. Caffery was cleared after a jury found him not guilty of hacking offences at the end of a week-long trial back in 2003, despite the fact that expert witnesses found no evidence of Trojan infection on his PC.
In other cases, suspected paedophiles have been cleared by computer forensics after Trojans capable of downloading illicit images were found on their PCs.
It's unclear to what extent Kernell's lawyers will use the "hackers used my PC as a proxy" patsy defence when his trial, scheduled to begin on 20 April next year, gets underway.
ping
Sounds a lot like “I didn’t shoot him, Judge, the gun shot him!”
So the spyware used an anonymous proxy to target Sarah Palin’s yahoo email account then brag about it on Bchan?
LOL yeah, the spyware made him do it..and the spyware also was able to not only find Sarah Palin’s personal email address, but also was able to hack into it, and plaster it all over the internet for everyone to see. And not only that, but the spyware also made this kid tell everyone that he was “Trying to find some juicy info” about Sarah Palin..That darn spyware, its a powerful thing
They’ll likely bring in a tech expert to talk about how idiotic this argument is.
Spyware may be responsible for a DoS attack by flooding someone's system, but this guy thoughtfully tried passwords related to Palin to break into her Yahoo account. No spyware would do that to a specific email account.
-PJ
Ever heard of Back Orifice, a network administration tool that can be used as a Trojan horse to compromise a target Windows®-based computer system and take remote control of it?
So yes, malware can be used to remotely compromise a target and take remote control of it, permitting the attacker to use the computer system in question as a proxy. That said, I think that this particular 21-year-old is toast.
“They’ll likely bring in a tech expert to talk about how idiotic this argument is.”
...or a six year old...
He makes me ashamed to be from Tennessee.
All that proves is that he looks at internet porn.
Further proof that leftards will say and do ANYTHING to try and absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions.
He had a PC? Prosecute him anyway for extreme technical idiocy.
“He had a PC? Prosecute him anyway for extreme technical idiocy.”
I’m a PC, and I resemble that remark!
Exactly. What a load of BS.
Geesh.....what excuse will the left think of next!!
A laughable defense to anyone with an iota of technical knowledge. Unfortunately, very few people have even that.
The prosecution hopefully will take this tactic seriously and bring in an expert to testify why it’s BS.
Shrinks will identify a new disorder (Alaskan Gov. Syndrome), and then his defense will be he couldn’t help it.
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