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The son of a prominent Democratic Tennessee state lawmaker was indicted Tuesday on charges of hacking into the Yahoo! Web mail account of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. David C. Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, was indicted by a federal grand jury on a single count of accessing Palin's e-mail without permission. The FBI said Kernell turned himself in to federal authorities and will be arraigned today.

Knoxville, TN—In what could land David Kernell in prison for up to five years, the hacking of Sarah Palin’s email account is, like David Kernell, completely misunderstood. On Wednesday, Kernell was charged with one felony count of accessing a protected computer for allegedly breaking into the private Yahoo e-mail account of Sarah Palin, R-AK, cooking up his own original recipe. Kernell has plead not guilty to the charge, and noted that he will have his day in court. “My time will come to give my side of the story,” stated Kernell, a 20-year old University of Tennessee student. “I believe...

The son of a Democratic Tennessee state lawmaker pleaded not guilty Wednesday to hacking the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn. entered the plea in federal court in Knoxville, the same day prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging him with intentionally accessing Palin's e-mail account... Kernell, an economics student ... was brought into court wearing handcuffs and shackles on his ankles. He was released without posting bond, but the court limited his computer use to checking his own e-mail and doing class work. Kernell's father is longtime state Rep. Mike Kernell of...

Lawmaker's son must stay off computer except for college workDavid Christopher Kernell walked into federal court this morning in handcuffs, shackles and tennis shoes to plead not guilty to hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account. He can stay out of jail for now as long as he stays off his computer.The University of Tennessee student, who is the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, D-Memphis, turned himself in today after being indicted by a federal grand jury.He made his first court appearance this morning before U.S. Magistrate Judge C. Clifford Shirley and could go to trial...

The son of a Democratic Tennessee state legislator surrendered to authorities in connection with the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

When he heard the name connected to the story – the one about the college kid who allegedly "hacked" his way into a personal e-mail account for Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin – Tracey McDaniels was not surprised. There was, after all, a history there. "He did the same kind of thing when he went to school here," said McDaniels, a history teacher at Eastern Hills Middle School. "He and another kid found a way to get onto the school's server – they just sat down and figured out the password." A taste of things to come for...

In what is slowly turning into a endless loop of hacktivism activities, Bill O’Reilly’s BillOreilly.com has been compromised during the weekend, with personal details including passwords in plain text for 205 of the site’s members already leaking across Internet forums, as a response to his remarks regarding Wikileaks as a “one of those despicable, slimy, scummy websites” which recently published private information of Sarah Palin’s private email.

The way I read it, no indictment was returned today, but the process is not over.

In what is slowly turning into a endless loop of hacktivism activities, Bill O’Reilly’s BillOreilly.com has been compromised during the weekend, with personal details including passwords in plain text for 205 of the site’s members already leaking across Internet forums, as a response to his remarks regarding Wikileaks as a “one of those despicable, slimy, scummy websites” which recently published private information of Sarah Palin’s private email. On Friday, Wikileaks issued the following press release : “Fox News demagogue, Bill O’Reilly, has been hacked and the details passed to Wikileaks. Wikileaks has been informed the hack was a response to...

A Grand Jury in Chattanooga on Tuesday morning heard testimony into the alleged hacking of the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Three young college-age people declined to comment as they entered the Federal Courthouse around 9 a.m. Security officers notified members of the media at 10:30 a.m. that the trio had exited the courthouse by another door. The three, including two males and a female, are apparently friends of a University of Tennessee student who is under investigation for the hacking. David Kernell is a UT student who is the son of a Democratic state legislator from...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A federal grand jury ended its session Tuesday without indicting a Democratic state lawmaker’s son in an investigation of someone hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail. That doesn’t mean the investigation is over.

As a federal grand jury convened to hear testimony about the hack of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account, the lawyer representing the college student suspected of accessing Palin's messages called his client "a decent and intelligent young man" in a statement issued to the media today. "The Kernell family wants to do the right thing, and they want what is best for their son," said Wade Davies, a partner in the Knoxville, Tenn., firm of Ritchie, Dillard & Davies PC, in the statement. "We are confident that the truth will emerge as we go through the process. David is...

The FBI has served a warrant at the college residence of David Kernell, a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in connection with the hacking of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s personal email account. Kernell (20) is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis. The FBI and Secret Service launched a formal investigation on September 17 into the hacking of one of Palin’s Yahoo email accounts. Yahoo declined to comment September 18 on details of the investigation, citing Palin’s privacy and the sensitivity of such investigations, FOX News reported. A Department of Justice spokesman told...

A federal grand jury in Chattanooga, Tenn., reportedly adjourned today without delivering an indictment in the hacking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account. The grand jury heard testimony this morning from three friends of University of Tennessee student David Kernell, according to the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, but ended its session around noon without returning an indictment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

Excerpt - WASHINGTON - The hunt for the hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account is shaping up to be a remarkably simple investigation, by the standards of major cybersecurity whodunits. ~ snip ~

The FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Monday. David Kernell, 20, has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails from the AP since last week. His lawyer said Monday the family is going through a difficult period.

To Register Doubts, Press Here By SAM LUBELL Published: May 15, 2003 Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. ''We used to be able to check the machines and see if they'd been tampered with,'' he said. ''It is now almost impossible.'' Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven't been tampered with. ''We've hit a brick wall,'' he said.

<p>The alleged hacker of Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email account should have taken some advice from Red Grant and every other James Bond villain: Don’t brag just because you think you got away with it.</p> <p>A Knoxville, Tenn, television station reported that a witness had seen the Federal Bureau of Investigation serve a federal search warrant at the residence of David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student.</p>

Excerpt - David Kernell, the young Memphis man at the center of a controversy over Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail, has hired a Knoxville attorney to help him deal with the issue, his father, state Rep. Mike Kernell, said today. ~ snip ~ “He’s hired an attorney,” Mike Kernell said by phone this afternoon. Kernell confirmed that the lawyer is Wade V. Davies of Knoxville. ~ snip ~

Palin hacker's IP address linked to Tenn. student's apartment September 22, 2008 (Computerworld) The man who traced the IP address of the hacker who accessed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account last week confirmed today that it belongs to an Illinois company that provides Internet service to the Knoxville, Tenn., apartment complex where the FBI served a search warrant early Sunday. Gabriel Ramuglia, the webmaster of Ctunnel, an Athens, Ga.-based proxy service used by the hacker to mask his or her identity, acknowledged that the IP address he found in his server logs belongs to Pavlov Media, an Internet service...

<p>The FBI is investigating the son of a Democratic Tennessee state lawmaker as part of a probe into the illegal break-in of GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account.</p> <p>David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics major at the University of Tennessee and the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, had his apartment searched by FBI agents over the weekend, The Associated Press and Knoxville, Tenn., TV station WBIR report.</p>

Democratic Rep. Mike Kernell of Tennessee has acknowledged that his 20-year son, David Kernell, is the subject of Internet postings alleging he is the person who hacked into Sarah Palin's e-mail, according to The Tennesseean. "The person they're talking about is my son," said Kernell. "But we know of no investigation. I have not been contacted. He has not been contacted," Kernell told a Memphis TV station. The FBI and Secret Service have not confirmed that David Kernell is a suspect. However, the TV station said the FBI in Anchorage, Alaska has contacted the Memphis FBI bureau in the investigation....

A Grand Jury in Chattanooga could reportedly hear testimony this week into the alleged hacking of the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Knoxville News-Sentinel said the FBI is investigating the possibility that a University of Tennessee student who is the son of a state legislator from Memphis carried out the hacking. The report said FBI agents raided the apartment of David Kernell early Sunday morning. It said friends of Kernell were interviewed, and said they are due to testify about the case in Chattanooga this week. A federal grand jury is set to convene in Chattanooga...

Link to article here.

The story of the Sarah Palin email hack has taken a new turn. According to security experts, the hackers have been traced to Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago. His national headquarters is located there.

Rep. invites callers to ask questions.

HT Mike Francesa At this point, all we know about the University of Tennessee student who is rumored to be the subject of an investigation into the Governor Sarah Palin email hack-attack is that he is the son of State Representative Mike Kernell (D) from Memphis. WBIR is reporting: The son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell confirmed on Thursday. To be CLEAR, at this point no charges have been filed. At this point, we only have confirmation...

O'Reilly takes aim at those responsible for both the hack and the "slimy" sites which propagated it. If for no other reason to watch the 2nd video, it's to see Megyn Kelly again... :)

Is the Obama campaign’s David Plouffe connected to alleged hacker David Kernell September 18th, 2008 This website may have evidence of a connection between David Plouffe of the Obama campaign and alleged hacker of Sarah Palin’s emails David Kernell, son of Tennessee Democratic Representative Mike Kernell: There is an apparent connection between David Kernell and David Plouffe. If you do a Technorati search for “david kernell” http://www.technorati.com/search/%22david+kernell%22?authority=a4&language=en and then click on Videos about David Kernell, the first video you see if of David Plouffe (Campaign manager for Obaman). He probably did the video for Plouffe. This is not a casual...

The guy who hacked into would-be VP Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account is none other than the son of a Democratic state representative from Tennessee, posits GatwayPundit. A convincing amount of evidence suggests the “hacker” (perhaps a status he doens’t deserve) is David Kernell, son of Tennessee representative Mike Kernell.

http://www.mikefrancesa.com/wordpress/?p=1212Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. ”We used to be able to check the machines and see if they’d been tampered with,” he said. ”It is now almost impossible.” Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven’t been tampered with. ”We’ve hit a brick wall,” he said.

The hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Mail account appears to have done so by requesting a password reset and answering the challenge questions with the help of Google and Wikipedia. According to a purported first-person account of the hack posted on 4chan.org, an online forum, "Rubico," the person claiming responsibility, initiated a password change on Palin's account and then supplied the Alaska governor's birthday and her home ZIP code, with the help of "Wikipedia andGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG) to find the info." That left the so-called security question: "Where did you meet your...

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.

This isn't about some kind of boycott of Yahoo. It's all about privacy. I'm heading over to Yahoo to delete everything in my online account. If hacking is this easy, then something's bad broke. Not that I'm famous enough for anyone to want to invade my privacy...but who knows what some nutcase might find valuable. Get out, get out, whoever you are. FreeRepublic2 -- reconsider if Yahoo is a good place for a backup FR site.

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Updated 08/09/08 20:18 Israel time Israel Insider has withstood a "trojan horse" hack attack on its website. An agent exploited Talkback to insert malicious code on a page about Obama's dubious birth certificate. While the hacker failed to bring down the site, and all pages are available for reading, we're suspending talkback service and will make other improvements to our security. Our apologies for the inconvenience. We'll be back soon, stronger than before.

Marisel Garcia is one of eight or nine women in the Gainesville, Florida who is a victim of a Webcam Spy Hacker voyeurism scandal, orchestrated by Craig Feigin. Craig Feigin, a computer programmer, worked on Marisel Garcia's computer to fix her laptop. When she got her machine back from Feigin, it had a slew of other problems so she brought it to another area repair man. One of the new problems was that the computer's built-in camera light came on every time she was near the machine. When Marisel Garcia got her computer back, she learned that Craig Feigin had...

A criminal gang is using software tools normally reserved for computer network administrators to infect thousands of PCs in corporate and government networks with programs that steal passwords and other information, a security researcher has found. The new form of attack indicates that little progress has been made in defusing the threat of botnets, networks of infected computers that criminals use to send spam, steal passwords and do other forms of damage, according to computer security investigators. Several security experts say that although attacks against network administrators are not new, the systematic use of administrative software to spread malicious software...

Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who broke into military computers looking for evidence of UFOs in the "biggest military hack of all time," did so using his home computer and a 56k modem. I think we just lost our rights to complain about not having Japan-fast broadband. Using his own computer at home in London, McKinnon hacked into 97 computers belonging to and used by the U.S. government between February 2001 and March 2002.McKinnon is accused of causing the entire U.S. Army's Military District of Washington network of more than 2,000 computers to be shut down for 24 hours.Using...

The mayor of San Francisco has obtained the password to the city's multimillion-dollar computer network password from a disgruntled employee during a secret jailhouse visit, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. On Monday night, Mayor Gavin Newsom met Terry Childs, a Department of Telecommunications and Information Services employee charged with computer tampering, in a secret meeting and walked away with the password to the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), the Chronicle said. The system stores such records as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings. Childs has been held since July 13 and had reportedly...

SAN FRANCISCO -- "The first thing I want you to know, Mr. Mayor, is that when you walk out of this room, you will have the computer codes." Those words - delivered to Mayor Gavin Newsom by imprisoned city computer tech Terry Childs in a small, fourth-floor room at city jail Monday - signaled the beginning of the end of the weeklong standoff in which San Francisco officials found themselves in the embarrassing position of being locked out of their own computer system. Childs - whom some have described as a friendly, hard worker at the city Technology Department, and...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco computer engineer accused of withholding access codes to the city's network surrendered the password during an unusual jailhouse visit by Mayor Gavin Newsom, authorities said Tuesday. Newsom came away with the access codes Monday night after talking with Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg, who has been held since July 13 on four felony counts stemming from what prosecutors describe as an effort to block administrative access to the network that handles 60 percent of the city's information, including sensitive law enforcement, payroll and jail booking records. Childs had given officials what turned out to...

Security researcher and author Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel's microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running. Kaspersky will demonstrate how such an attack can be made in a presentation at the upcoming Hack In The Box (HITB) Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during October. The proof-of-concept attacks will show how processor bugs, called errata, can be exploited using certain instruction sequences and a knowledge of how Java compilers work, allowing an attacker to take control of the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday. Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday. Prosecutors say Childs, who works in Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files,...

Photobucket, the popular photo sharing website, became the target of a DNS hack on Tuesday. As a result of the attack some (but not all) surfers hoping to check out pictures were involuntarily redirected to a greeting from hacker NetDeliz and a message in Turkish. A post to Photobucket's user forum blamed the problem on "an error in our DNS hosting services". It stressed that users' personal information was not affected by the redirection. On Tuesday afternoon, some users that typed in the Photobucket.com URL were temporarily redirected to an incorrect page due to an error in our DNS hosting...

Jim Louderback, CEO of internet TV network Revision3, is considering legal action against anti-piracy firm MediaDefender after an internal investigation revealed it to be the source of a Memorial Day weekend Denial of Service attack against Revision3’s computer network.

Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts. One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the...

Computer attacks typically don't inflict physical pain on their victims. But in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images.

Some months ago, my contacts in the defense industry had alerted me to a startling development that has escalated to the point of near-panick in nearly all corners of Government security and IT infrastructure. The very-real concern, being investigated by the FBI, is that either the Chinese government or Chinese hackers (or both) have had the benefit of undetectable back-doors into highly secure government and military computer networks for months, perhaps years. The cause: a high-number of counterfeit Cisco routers and switches installed in nearly all government networks that experienced upgrades and/or new units within the past 18 months.