David Kernell Indicted for Alleged Palin Hacking

20-year-old University of Tennessee student David Kernell has been indicted for allegedly hacking Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo! email account (use of which by Palin, for official Alaskan government business, is against disclosure rules and has caused much criticism, but that's another story).

Earlier the FBI had searched his apartment.

The press release about the indictment, posted on the Department of Justice (DoJ) website says:

The single count indictment, returned on Oct. 7, 2008, and unsealed today, alleges that on approximately Sept. 16, 2008, Kernell, a resident of Knoxville, obtained unauthorized access to Gov. Palin’s personal e-mail account by allegedly resetting the account password. According to the indictment, after answering a series of security questions that allowed him to reset the password and gain access to the e-mail account, Kernell allegedly read the contents of the account and made screenshots of the e-mail directory, e-mail content and other personal information. According to the indictment, Kernell posted screenshots of the e-mails and other personal information to a public Web site. Kernell also allegedly posted the new e-mail account password that he had created, thus providing access to the account by others.

If convicted of the charge, the defendant faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three year term of supervised release.

Kernell turned himself in to authorities on Wednesday and was released the same day after pleading not guilty at his arraignment. His trial date is Dec. 16th, according to a statement from Wade Davis, his attorney.

The day after the break-in, screenshots from Palin’s "gov.palin@yahoo.com" account were posted on Wikileaks.org. Originally, hackers linked to "Anonymous," the group that's been giving Scientology a hard time, was credited with the hack. But a hacker with the handle "rubico" posted details on 4chan.org's popular /b/ (random) board of how he broke into Palin’s account. The "rubico" handle was later traced to Kernell.

Kernell is the son of Tennessee state Representative Mike Kernell (D-Memphis).