How visiting 4chan busted the alleged Palin hacker
Federal agents searched the apartment of a University of Tennessee student on Sunday they believe might be the hacker script kiddy who broke into Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin's Yahoo account and then posted its password to the subversive discussion board site 4chan.org. The feds pinpointed the accused's IP address after contacting the proxy service he used in an attempt to disguise his identity. Gabriel Ramuglia, who runs the proxy service, told Portfolio that only one of his users had activity which matched what the feds were looking for: someone who "visited Yahoo Mail, 4chan.org, and the Web addresses that were visible in the posted screenshots."The authorities won't say, but consensus has it the Tennessee college student under investigation is one David Kernell, a 20-year-old whose father, Mike Kernell, is a Democrat in the Tennessee state legislature. His email address is rubicon10@yahoo.com, which matches the name of a 4chan user — Rubico — who posted a detailed confession of the hack on the site last week. Also, whoever broke into Palin's account first changed the password to "popcorn," which could be a pun on Kernell's last name.