Palin hacker to use spyware defense?

Sarah Palin talks to a young fan while at a book tour stop in
Roanoke, Va., Sunday, Oct. 22, 2009. (AP Photo/ Don Petersen)

Lawyers acting for David Kernell, the son of a Democrat Tennessee state legislator, accused of illegally breaking into the email account of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, are claiming his Acer laptop was infected with unspecified spyware in a motion filed on November 30. This may be used at his trial to show that Kernell was not personally responsible for the hack.

The shocking invasion of former Governor Sarah Palin's yahoo e-mail account during her run as vice president is referenced in her book Going Rogue...

"The incident was, to me, the most disruptive and discouraging of the campaign. It created paralysis in my administration because it cut off an easily accessible form of communication between me and my Alaska staff."

The webmail account was compromised after hackers reset Palin's password using biographical info and the content of Palin's emails and family photos were uploaded onto 4Chan.

David Kernell has pleaded not guilty to fraud, unlawful electronic transmission of material outside Tennessee and attempts to conceal records to impede an FBI investigation.

Although the court documents do not identify the spyware, they indicate that the software was reverse-engineered and analyzed within the five forensic reports the U.S. government produced for this case. Those reports have been filed under seal because they contain personal information.

The Register reports that the so-called Trojan defense was successfully used by accused hacker Aaron Caffrey, an Asperger's sufferer charged with using systems run by the Port of Houston to run a DDoS attack, crashing servers in Texas in the process. Caffery was cleared after a jury found him not guilty of hacking offences at the end of a week-long trial back in 2003, despite the fact that expert witnesses found no evidence of Trojan infection on his PC.

In other cases, suspected paedophiles have been cleared by computer forensics after Trojans capable of downloading illicit images were found on their PCs.

Kernell's trial is scheduled to begin on April 20, 2010 and only then will we know how important a role this defense will play.