Looks like law finally caught up with David Kernell who has been convicted of hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account. Kernell was sentenced on Friday to one year in prison. He was convicted earlier this year of misdemeanor computer intrusion and obstruction of justice. After four hours of deliberation the jury decided and Kernell was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.
Kernell is the son of Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernel. Kernell was also accused of attempting to delete evidence from his hard drive which carried a more serious charge. The crime dates back to September 2008 when a hacker named “Rubico” had gained access to Palin’s personal Yahoo e-mail account. Kernell was able to gain access to the account by using publicly available information such has Palin’s birth date and postal zip and changed the password to “popcorn”.
After gaining access to the account he checked out pictures from her account and snapshots of emails that were posted on 4Chan. Hacker Rubico was traced to Kernell. A University of Tennessee student majoring in economics at the time, Kernell had targeted Palin to find information that could potentially derail her campaign. No such information was ever found from her account.
Critics accused Palin of using personal email address to conduct state official business. Some even accused the former Alaska governor of using her personal account to avoid public oversight.