VentureBeat - Latest Comments in Security expert Dan Kaminsky weighs in on the Sarah Palin email hack

Re: Security expert Dan Kaminsky weighs in on the Sarah Palin email hack

Matt Marshall — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:50:09 -0000

S.t,
I've updated. Party is Democrat.

Re: Security expert Dan Kaminsky weighs in on the Sarah Palin email hack

S.t — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:38:26 -0000

Dean Takahashi wrote,

"...update: In the Palin case, authorities say they are questioning a suspect, David Kernell, the son of Tennesee State Representative Mike Kernell] "

Dean - WHAT POLITICAL PARTY IS MIKE KERNELL ??????

Re: Security expert Dan Kaminsky weighs in on the Sarah Palin email hack

Dan Kaminsky — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:26:45 -0000

y r--

Well, something happened. A VP candidate had her mail hacked. Specifically, the VP candidate that large swaths of America -- themselves using webmail -- are identifying with. So, yeah, something happened.

The question is how, and why, and the answers are actually pretty interesting. Webmail is set up to allow anonymous participation, because if you're not allowed to be anonymous, you simply won't participate (and from a market perspective, a surprising number of users will migrate to the systems that do let them participate).

Now, capitalize that a in the previous sentence, and things go a bit wonky.

We can maybe forgive O'Reilly and Oprah for not understanding just how insecure the Internet really is. It's not their domain. That, yes, even /b/tards can pop webmail at a multi-billion dollar company is just entirely outside their comprehension.

Re: Security expert Dan Kaminsky weighs in on the Sarah Palin email hack

y r — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:46:44 -0000

That's not the real news. As a regular both here and at 4chan.org i'm appalled with how deeply the ignorance goes about this story. This article is way off the mark VB!

4chan.org has a large forum called /b/ that's full of kids. Most posts on the forum are submitted without a 'name' field, and are therefore displayed as signed by 'anonymous'. some dude who broke into Palin's email is a regular there (as are 30k people in a given moment, it is basically a huge international community, of people screwing around and making jokes), posted the password, and a bunch of people used it before the account locked up on them.

Then Bob O'Reilly and Oprah both made a joke out of themselves suggesting an organized group is somehow responsible for this, and that group - that includes some kids with bad jugdement, granted - took offense and nudged his website.

If anything, this story is about how people in power (Palin, O'Reilly, Oprah) have got no clue about what a vibrant online community is, and their staff is just as ignorant. It is about the generation gap and about the zeitgeist of kids today.

Reality check ahead! Nothing happened! This story is the lead story on Techmeme.com because people in the know are laughing their asses off the media and some important people being fools!

SERIOUSLY people... come on /b/ and have a laugh over photoshopped Palin nudes with the rest of us...

Jesus!