Wired’s Threat Level Blog is reporting that the University of Tennessee student accused of hacking into then vice presidental candidate Sarah Palin’s email account has been hit with three more felony charges.  21 year old David Kernell has already been indicted on one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and now will also face charges of wire fraud, identity theft, and obstruction of justice. Here’s an excerpt:

Threat Level broke the story last September that someone had obtained unauthorized access to Palin’s e-mail account by using publicly available information about her to reset her password to “popcorn.” He then posted the screenshots of e-mail in Palin’s account, as well as her new password, to a forum at 4chan.org under the username “Rubico”, enabling other intruders to access Palin’s account. Bloggers quickly traced the name Rubico to an e-mail address — Rubico10@yahoo.com — that Kernell was known to use, prosecutors say.

If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $40,000. Ironically, Kernell has sought to have prosecutors barred from referring to him as a hacker, even though that is exactly what he is. He claims he gained access to the account by simply guessing the answers to Palin’s security answers (which is a powerful reminder to make them as complex as possible rather than use things anyone could easily find out about you), but the mere fact he did so shows his intentions were to gain access to someone else’s account, and then when he changed Palin’s password and posted it on a public message board it’s obvious he was encouraging others to do the same. Hopefully he will learn a painful and expensive lesson!