Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> Threat Level

Intellectual Property Law

: Threat Level

Palin Hacker Allegedly Involved in Another Computer Intrusion

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

David Kernell, the student indicted this weekfor gaining unauthorized access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo account, was allegedly involved in computer intrusion about eight years ago when he was in high school. He and another student guessed the password of a school server while attending Eastern Hills Middle School in Texas, and gained access to some lesson plans, according to one of Kernell's former teachers.

IDG News Service reported the incident yesterday in ComputerWorld but didn't give props to the newspaper that broke the news, so we'll do it here. The Killeen Daily Herald first reported last Friday about the intrusion, quoting Kernell's former history teacher, Tracey McDaniels, who discovered it.

The infraction, described as minor, happened from a classroom computer when Kernell was in the seventh grade. The school server stored teaching materials but, McDaniels told IDG, the students didn't access anything important on the network. They quickly admitted what they'd done after the teacher found that a computer terminal was connected to the server and asked his class who had logged in.

The two students received after-school detention for the unauthorized access.

Neither Kernell nor his lawyer returned calls from Threat Level seeking confirmation of the previous intrusion.

McDaniels said Kernell wouldn't have been able to change his grades on the system or do much more than browse lesson plans. He told IDG that he thought Kernell did it "just because he could. Just a challenge maybe."

According to the Killeen Daily Herald, Kernell was living in Killeen, Texas, during high school, with his mother Dr. Lillian Landrigan. His father, Tennessee state representative Mike Kernell, lived in Memphis, where the younger Kernell would visit.

McDaniels told the Daily Heraldthat Kernell was in a class for talented and gifted students and that Kernell was "the kind of kid you could not forget."

"He was one of the smartest kids I ever taught, especially when it came to the social sciences and politics," McDaniels said, adding that "he stood head and shoulders above everybody else in the political spectrum. I was a political science major in college, and he could hold a conversation with me ? a coherent one."

Kernell was into computers and computer games and was outstanding at chess, enough to qualify him as a United States Chess Federation-rated player.

McDaniels said Kernell was also a bit of a loner and "standoffish" and that he believed other kids didn't know what to make of him.

Kernell's social awkwardness seems to have resolved itself by the time he got to college in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was arraigned this week. He was living with three roommates at the University of Tennessee ? another male and two females ? who were hosting a small party when FBI agents arrived to the apartment on Sept. 21 to execute a search warrant. Kernell also mentioned in court during his arraignment yesterday that he had a girlfriend in South Carolina.

See Also:

• Tennessee Student Indicted for Hacking Palin E-mail
• Palin Had a Third E-mail Account
• FBI Searches Apartment of Tennessee Student Suspected of Palin Hack
• Little or No Jail Time Likely for Palin Hacker
• Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy
• Group Posts E-Mail Hacked from Palin Account

Full post as published by Threat Level on October 09, 2008 (boomark / email).