Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's private email account has been hacked and a number of her emails and photos have been published online.
The-email account has since been shut down, but its contents which includes photos, contacts and snapshots of e-mail exchanges the Alaska governor had with colleagues, can be seen below.
Palin has come under fire for using private e-mail accounts to conduct state business, and that appears to have been validated with the posted contents of her Yahoo! account. Critics believe she was using the non-government email account to conduct state business and thus get around public records laws.
One of the e-mails apparently shows an exchange with Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell discussing a talk show host who had been critical of Parnell (third image), but nothing terribly scandalous other than confirmation that Palin was in fact using a private email address to conduct state business so that no record would be kept -- which is quite serious in itself.
A campaign manager for John McCain released a statement and called the published Palin emails a “shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law.”
Law enforcement has been put on the case to find the individual who hacked into her account, who is currently only known by the hacker name 'Anonymous'.
UPDATE:
The hacker has now posted details on how he obtained the password to Palin's email account. He apparently used Yahoo's 'forgot my password' feature, which allows you to reset your password upon answering a secret security question. Palin's setup question asked where she met her husband, Todd. The hacker remembered that in her speech at the Republican National Convention Palin said they began dating two decades ago in high school in Wasilla. So he did some research and after being able to correctly answer the question, he was able to change the password and login with ease.
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's private email account has been hacked and a number of her emails and photos have been published online.
