"He goes by the name Rubico"

David Kernell's friends are not doing him any favours.

Devon Holbrook is a UT student from Memphis who grew up with Kernell. He was shocked to hear from mutual friends that David was in some serious trouble.

"I went on Google, and the first thing I saw is David's picture and articles talking about what had happened," Holbrook said. "I immediately started freaking out."

When Holbrook confirmed the news about the FBI frenzy surrounding his longtime friend, he started calling but wasn't able to connect with Kernell.

"I would love to know where he is and know he's alright."

Holbrook says Kernell loves chess, economics, and talking about politics.

"I would definitely say he's more to the left in terms of politics, but he's never really been active as far as political groups or anything like that," Holbrook added.

However under a different name, Kernell's political views are all over several websites.

"He goes by the name Rubico," Holbrook said.

A blogger named Rubico admitted to the web community he broke into Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's e-mail, saying it was easy.

Proxy Webmaster says Palin hacker's IP leads to Kernell's front door

These noose tightens on social engineer and Obamacrat David Kernell.

The man who traced the IP address of the hacker who accessed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail account last week confirmed today that it belongs to an Illinois company that provides Internet service to the Knoxville, Tenn., apartment complex where the FBI served a search warrant early Sunday.

Gabriel Ramuglia, the webmaster of Ctunnel, an Athens, Ga.-based proxy service used by the hacker to mask his or her identity, acknowledged that the IP address he found in his server logs belongs to Pavlov Media, an Internet service provider based in Champaign, Ill.

Ramuglia also said he was mistaken when he said earlier he did not think the FBI had the right suspect.

Ramuglia said Sunday that the IP address he found in the proxy service logs didn't "look consistent" with reports identifying Kernell. By today, however, he had changed his mind.

"It became clear that the ISP, in addition to serving Illinois, also serves Tennessee, which means that the IP address could actually be consistent with the news reports," Ramuglia said today.

Suspected Palin Hacker hid from the FBI

I know this is totally the behaviour of someone who has done nothing wrong.

According to witnesses, the raid came while several neighbors were partying after the University of Tennessee verse Florida football game

“This black SUV came up, and all these guys got out with equipment and they had a big black bag with high tech stuff in it,” said Jarrett Mooneyham, who was at the apartment. “It was just a big ordeal and everybody was drunk, so it was really chaotic."

Mooneyham said the agents were looking for Kernell, but never found him because he was hiding out on the second floor of the complex with some of his friends.

UPDATE

The Webmaster at C-tunnel doubts whether the FBI have the right guy!!!!!

Does the FBI have its man in the Palin hacking case?

A major break in the case of who hacked into Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin's private Yahoo! email account earlier this week.

Early this morning, the FBI issued a search warrant at David Kernell's apartment. Witnesses said the feds were there for about 2 hours and took pictures of the entire place.

Wild goose chase?

Not likely.

Consider this:

The hacker, who went by the screen name "rubico" at 4chan.org. wrote a confession in the forum that was later deleted. Here's one of the things he said.

and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Got that?

One proxy.

Unfortunately, "rubico's" screenshots of Palin's emails, which he leaked to the world, showed his entire Web browser, including which proxy service he was using -- CTunnel.com

On Thursday, Gabriel Ramuglia, operator of Ctunnel.com, said in an interview that it would only take him a day to narrow down who did it from his logs.

"Usually, this sort of thing would be hard to track down because it's Yahoo email, and a lot of people use my service for that," he told El Reg in a phone interview. "Since they were dumb enough to post a full screenshot that showed most of the [Ctunnel.com] URL, I should be able to find that in my log."

Ramuglia got into the proxy business a few years ago, after schools began blocking access to an online game site he used to co-own. Pretty soon, people began using the proxy service to access YouTube, Gmail, MySpace, and dozens of other sites that are routinely blocked by IT departments.

To prevent abuse of the service - such as the occasional bomb threat or other illegal act that's been known to happen - Ramuglia logs each user's IP address, along with the time and web destination. That often isn't enough to track down people who access extremely popular websites. But in this case, the perpetrators included a whole string of random-looking characters when posting screenshots of Palin's hacked account. That will probably be enough for him to pinpoint the proverbial needle in the haystack.

So the FBI likely received this information by end of business day on Friday.

Do you think they would raid the son of a state legislator's home on a wild goose chase now?

UPDATE: A commenter at Gateway Pundit who claims to have experience tracking down hackers and Internet stalkers says the following.

They had to get subpoenas to get the anonymizer services, other proxy services and the ISP's to cough up their records and then obtain those records, they probably also got all of his phone records, including text messages. I am sure they have a list of every website he has visited (all of them-including any he visited behind a proxy) and every phone call and text message he has made for the last 5 years. Then they had to get a warrant for his arrest. They are also probably getting warrants for any and all who knowingly hosted the posts he made of the contents of Gov. Palin's email account, too. Those people will be charged as accessories. I hope they all have retained legal help-they will need it.

They also have probably had him, his family, his friends and the people he most likes to chat to via internet or phone under close surveillance 24/7 since this occurred. He really was not a flight risk and if he had tried he would have been stopped. As to the "contents of his computer" there are ways to restore that but he made enough public posts of the contents of her email account and his actions to obtain them to convict him. I hope his daddy doesn't have anything incriminating on his computer because they probably seized all the computers in the house.

UPDATE

Nashville blogger and former NBC News correspondent Sharon Cobb, who is also a personal friend of the Kernell family, says David Kernell has not been arrested.

PS--Let me add that David is in a hotel with his father, Mike, and not in jail.

Let me also reiterate that I stand by Rep. Mike Kernell who never has had anything to do with this, and my heart goes out to him and David's mother who just got back from Iraq.

My heart also goes out to the Palins for having this happen to them. While I disagree with Palin on all political issues, no one should have their private email invaded.

Again, David is free, and I have no idea what will happen next.

FBI serves search warrant against David Kernell

This just in ...

The FBI is stepping up its investigation into the possibility that a University of Tennessee student hacked into the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

A person who identified himself as a witness tells 10 News that agents with the FBI served a federal search warrant at the Fort Sanders residence of David Kernell early Sunday morning. Kernell lives in the Commons apartment complex at 1115 Highland Ave.


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

A Department of Justice spokesperson confirmed there has been "investigatory activity" in Knoxville regarding the Palin case, but she said there are no publicly available search warrants, and no charges have been filed.

A separate law enforcement source confirmed to 10 News that a search warrant was served on Kernell's apartment.

According to the witness, several agents arrived at The Commons of Knoxville around midnight.

They presented their badges upon entering Kernell's apartment, where several students were having a party, and took down their names.

The witness tells us they asked him and those who did not live in the unit to go outside. He believes the investigators took about 1.5 to 2 hours taking pictures of everything inside the apartment.

He says Kernell's three roommates were also subpoenaed, and must testify this week in Chattanooga.

Does NewsBusters know Rubico10's IP?

A pretty good case is being made by The College Politico.

After all of this I really think there are several things we can learn about these screenshots. They are, in fact, from Rubico. They show he is on a NewsBusters post while hacking into Palin’s email. They show that he is NOT using a proxy to view the NewsBuster post. They give us a specific time frame that he was on the NewsBusters post. Those things are important because they mean that NewsBusters, most likely, can figure out if David Kernell (or rather someone from the University of Tennessee, who I would assume is David Kernell) was on that specific post durring that specific time frame. Is it evidence that you could use in court? Certainly not, but is it enough to get one step closer to convincing me and put a clearer focus on Kernell? Absolutely.

Rumoured Palin hacker lawyers up

As he should ....

The latest from the Nashville blogger who says she's friends' with David Kernell's father, Rep. Mike Kernell.

UPDATE; Sept 19, 5:01 PM. Just got off the phone with Mike Kernell, who is in Knoxville with his son, David, and they were headed out for dinner with David's lawyer. Law enforcement still has not contacted father or son. Beyond that, I'm done with updates, as I've been called names on other blogs for being one of the few people accurately reporting this story, and for that, I've been called a whore, an attention whore, a bitch, a liar, and other words I won't use.
I gave you the truth, and you had to be evil and cruel, like so many bloggers and especially anonymous bloggers are, and that's not okay. So wait and you'll eventually find out what really happened, but not from me.

But I want to be clear Mike Kernell is an honorable man who does not and will not lie, and whatever his son did or didn't do has nothing to do with Mike, and I stand behind Rep. Mike Kernell 100 percent. He is my friend, and his integrity is beyond reproach and I'm not taking anymore crap over reporting the truth and being accused of doing nothing more than spinning for a friend by people who don't know the first thing about reporting.

My friend, Mike, and his son, are two different issues. I will defend Mike to the death. I have no idea what his son did or didn't do, and neither do you.

This contradicts the wild rumour in Protein Wisdom's pub that Kernell had already been taken into custody.

Memphis TV Station confirms FBI Palin hacking probe focusing on Memphis

Tennessee Rep. Mike Kernell has denied reports his son is being investigated in the federal probe into who hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo account, but now a Memphis TV station has confirmed the investigationn is focusing on Memphis.

But Democratic State Representative Mike Kernell tells News Channel 3 his 20-year-old son has not been questioned by the FBI. He says he's absolutely amazed at how quickly this story has spread on the internet.

Right now there's a lot of speculation out there.

But News Channel 3 has confirmed the Anchorage division of the FBI has contacted the Memphis division and an investigation is underway.

UPDATE: Memphis FBI spokesperson confirms local force investigating Palin case.