Following remarkably quickly from the general point, here is a very particular example:

A person claiming to be the hacker who obtained access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail on Tuesday has posted a supposed first-person account of the hack, revealing the relatively simple steps he says he took to crack the private e-mail of the Republican vice-presidential candidate.… As detailed in the postings, the Palin hack didn’t require any real skill. Instead, the hacker simply reset Palin’s password using her birthdate, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search.

Being clear about what really counts as a secret is hard now.  It’s clearly going to get ever harder.

Responses

  1. I dont think there’s anything in the content revealed that is damaging to Ms Lipstick. But I guess it’s a bit slapdash to have your gubernatorial emails on a Yahoo account (could happen here, could it? We’ve never heard of senior officials using their home Hotmail accounts to work at home).
    I guess we should ask Sen McCain to explain the technical merits and demerits of using web based email for official business. After all, he probably invented the stuff.

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