October 8th, 2008
Kernell's prior: In 7th grade he broke into school computer
Hard-hitting news here: Sarah Palin’s email wasn’t the first time David Kernell applied guesswork to breaking into a computer system, Computerworld reports.
The other incident allegedly occurred around 2000, when Kernell was in the seventh grade. Kernell and an accomplice guessed the password to a server used to store teaching materials at the school and were able to log on to the system, McDaniels said.
The two junior hackers “fessed up pretty quickly” after teacher Tracey McDaniels found a classroom computer connected to the server and then simply asked the class who had done it, he said.
On the personality front, McDaniesl said Kernell was a smart, stand-offish kid none too popular with peers.
He could carry on a conversation about politics with me, and he was 12 years old. He could talk Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations and Machiavelli. The other seventh-graders kind of saw him as an anomaly and didn’t want to hang out with him.
Sound like anyone you know?
