The InformationWeek -- Blogs
Security

Topics:   Security

  • Email this page E-mail this page
  • Print this page Print this page
  • Bookmark and Share
  • icon

VP Hopeful Sarah Palin's Yahoo E-Mail Account Hacked


Posted by George Hulme, Sep 17, 2008 05:30 PM

A team of hackers dubbed "Anonymous" claims to have breached vice presidential hopeful Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account, based on a number of announcements and screenshots posted to the Web and Wikileaks.org

Either it was an elaborate fake, or the hackers actually did compromise VP Palin's e-mail address and then send the information to Wikileaks.

The link, which has been only intermittently available, is available here:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_email_hack_2008

This is the information that was posted on Wikileaks.org:

Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) Wikileaks' sources loosely affiliated with the activist group 'anonymous' gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to avoid government transparency mechanisms. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin's inbox, example emails, address book and two family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name, appears to re-enforce the criticism.

It's not yet at all clear how Gov. Palin's account had been breached, although chances are that the password to her account was cracked and Yahoo wasn't breached.

This AP story quotes a statement from the McCain campaign on the incident:

"This is a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them," the McCain campaign said in a statement.

« 5 Web Lessons From Google's Analytics Guru | Main | IBM's Bob Picciano Shows Off IBM's Forward Thinking On Social Networks »



Sign up now for the weekly InformationWeek Blog Newsletter.


This is a public forum. United Business Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. United Business Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers.

Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of United Business Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in United Business Media's Terms of Service.

Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.