MSMVPS.COM

The Ultimate Destination for Blogs by Current and Former Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.
Welcome to MSMVPS.COM Sign in | Help
in Search

Harry Waldron - Corporate and Home Security

Latest Security Developments and Best Practices are shared to help keep users safe

How Sarah Palin's Yahoo email was Hacked

Idea For public email accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail, below are some safety tips:

1. Always be careful of what you say when it comes to email. Think of it as a permanent record even if you delete it.  Finally "it's always good to be careful in what you say, and twice so in what you write".

2. Never store any sensitive email in a public facility where security could be compromised.  As a better practice, any sensitive message should be copied to your hard drive and deleted from potential public access.

3. Security questions are your MOST IMPORTANT safeguard in any web based facility where a password can be mailed back.  If the 3 questions are easy to guess, any unauthorized person could gain entry (e.g., family member, friend, or criminal). When it comes to security questions, it's good to be "less forthcoming" by misspelling or using incorrect answers.  As a best practice, ensure that only you know the answers to the password-reset questions.

4. Complex and difficult-to-guess passwords are mandatory for any Internet site (letters, numbers, case, etc)

5. It is a good practice to change passwords on a regular basis

6. Don't use the same password for every website or email account

7. You may also want to write down the security questions/answers in case of future account lockout issues.  If you create a special file containing password or secret question information, keep it in a confidential and offline location.     

How Sarah Palin's Yahoo email was Hacked
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Sarah-Palin-Hack-an-Example-of-Password-Recovery-Backfire/
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1595343/20080922/story.jhtml
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5068
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2008/09/22/tennessee-student-is-focus-of-palin-e-mail-hack-investigation.html
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/21/160222
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/3772981/The+Security+Lesson+in+the+Sarah+Palin+Email+Hack.htm
http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2008/09/governor-palins-email-security.html

QUOTE: The ease with which Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail was hacked is striking and underscores the importance of improving privacy questions for password recovery. A person claiming responsibility for the hack posted details of what he did Wednesday on a 4chan.org message board. The handle of the poster has been linked to the 20-year-old son of Tennessee Democrat Mike Kernell.

Yahoo required the user provide Palin’s birthday and zip code, which the hacker said he found through Wikipedia and Google. The final security measure required him to answer a question regarding where Palin met her spouse; another Google search turned up the answer.

Only published comments... Sep 22 2008, 12:35 PM by Harry Waldron

Comments

 

Payday Loan Advocate said:

David Kernell, the 20-year-old son of Democratic Representative Mike Kernell of Tennessee, got popped. According to CNN (“Democratic lawmaker's son indicted in Palin hacking”), he reset the password and gained access to GOP VP candidate Palin's personal E-mail account. It is alleged that he read the contents, took a screenshot of her E-mail directory and obtained other personal information. The information that may have been compromised includes E-mail addresses and pictures of family members, one or more cell phone numbers of family members, family birthdates and more from Palin's address book. Interestingly, after turning himself in, David Kernell pleaded not guilty. He pleaded not guilty despite the fact that he (allegedly) took the information he hacked from Palin's personal account and posted it to a public Web site. Not only that, but he posted the new password he’d created, which would enable others to easily access Palin's E-mail themselves and view any of the contents. As a result, Kernell Junior may be subject to the heat of a five-year prison term, $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. That’s enough to turn anybody into a fluffy white piece of popcorn. At the maximum of $1,500 per loan, that bail would require about 167 individual payday loans to free that fluffy little popped grain treat from being overcooked by cellmates.

Post Courtesy of Personal Money Store

Professional Blogging Team

Feed Back:  1-866-641-3406

Home: personalmoneystore.com/NoFaxPaydayLoans.html

Blog: personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog

October 11, 2008 1:37 AM
 

Payday Loan Advocate said:

Like many Americans who make up that growing class of “disillusioned” voters, I watched the latest “town hall”-style TV debate between Barack Obama and John McCain with my expectations held firmly in check. No matter how many direct questions you ask a politician, regardless of their party affiliation, the answers you receive will resemble generalized sound bites. The New York Times described it as “90 minutes of forced cordiality,” and I must agree. While the exchange was “mercifully free” of personal attacks (according to the Boston Globe), the result was that it was free of much of the tension that makes for compelling television. McCain continued to trumpet experience, his “stay the course” stance on Iraq (seriously, he could have been G.H. Bush’s understudy) and his oil drilling policies. Obama continued to criticize Republican policies that he claims have led America into its current recession. If all were based upon the candidates’ performance here, we’d have no idea exactly how either of them would work to avert pending economic catastrophe. A coherent economic proposal is what America needs. Obama’s stance on “predatory lending” – effectively sanctioning payday advance lenders – is not a coherent solution to the real economic problems we face. That’s just a juicy steak to feed the banking and credit union dogs.

October 14, 2008 5:03 AM
 

David Johnston said:

We like your site and we think that links from your site will help our search engine rankings. We would like to offer content such as written articles, bookmarking, or video commentary for back links or pay you for links. If you are interested please let us know.

Please reply to:

David Johnston

Personal Money Store

509-954-3437

affiliate@personalmoneystore.com

November 9, 2008 11:38 PM

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(optional)
(required) 
Submit
Powered by Community Server (Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems