IDG News Service - The University of Tennessee college student accused of illegally accessing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account was formally charged today on new fraud and obstruction-of-justice charges.

David Kernell was arraigned in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, five months after a federal grand jury first handed down charges against him. He had been facing just one count of illegally accessing a protected computer, but prosecutors are now accusing him of three counts of computer fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. All four charges are felonies.

Kernell pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to court records. Neither his attorney, Wade Davies, nor Gregory Weddle, the assistant U.S. attorney working on the case, returned messages seeking comment.

During last year's presidential race, Kernell used publicly available information to reset the password for Palin's gov.palin@yahoo.com account and then posted information from that account to an online bulletin board at 4chan.org, prosecutors said in court filings. Kernell also posted the reset passwords to Palin's account, which were used by at least one other person to access the account.

Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis.

Palin's e-mail messages were posted to the Wikileaks.org Web site on Sept. 17, and the hack attracted national media attention. Within days, Kernell was linked to the incident by bloggers who concluded that he was the anonymous hacker named Rubico who had first posted the Palin data.

According to reports, Rubico had been hoping to find something that would "derail" Palin's vice-presidential campaign.

Worried that the FBI was on his trail, Kernell deleted records on his laptop computer in hopes of hiding his tracks, prosecutors said.

His trial is set to begin on Oct. 27.

Comment Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

University of Tennessee

Additional Resources

Microsoft

DirectAccess and UAG: Better Together

Here are some of the key reasons why you would want to run Unified Access Gateway with DirectAccess.

Microsoft

Case Study: Energy Firm Tightens Protection, Simplifies IT Work

Review how one energy firm tightened protection and simplified IT work using business-ready security solutions.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

What People Are Saying

10 comments | Add new

See all comments (10) | Add new

White Papers & Webcasts

Death to PST Files
Download Now

Four Ways to Improve Your TSM Environment with a SEPATON VTL
Watch Now

The Tangled Web: Silent Threats & Invisible Enemies
Download Now

Tape Killed the IT Guy
Watch Now

Forrester Consulting Mobility Study: Taking Control of Enterprise Mobile Device Diversity
Download Now

BRM: What You Can Do To Reduce Risk In Challenging Times
Watch this webcast now!

What IT Must Do to Support Employee-Owned BlackBerry, iPhone and Android Mobile Devices
Download Now

Web 2.0, Social Media and the Dark Web - A Web Criminals Paradise?
In this discussion, learn about the challenges of protecting your users from the potentially unsafe content hidden in the "Dark Web".

eGuide: Enterprise Security
Smart Security Strategies for 2010. Read now!

Disaster Recovery 2008: Reduced Costs and Improved Performance
How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an accelerated disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this...

All White Papers | All Webcasts