David Kernell, the son of a prominent Democratic Tennessee state lawmaker, was indicted for hacking into the Yahoo! Web mail account of Sarah Palin, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor. Kernell broke into the account by guessing the answers to her pre-selected "Secret Questions," which must be answered before Yahoo! will allow users to reset their account passwords.
The hack was apparently facilitated by the fact that Yahoo! does not allow new registrants to make up their own question for resetting their passwords. Kerrin apparently found information on Wikipedia and used Google to discover the answers to her pre-selected secret questions and change her account password.
See, "Son of Tenn. Lawmaker Indicted in Palin E-Mail Hack," Washington Post, October 8, 2008, at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/10/son_of_tenn_lawmaker_indicted.html?hpid=news-col-blogs.
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