Palin hacker's IP address linked to Tenn. student's apartmentProxy service operator confirms IP address of hacker belongs to ISP that provides service to apartment searched by FBIThe 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.
According to its Web site, Pavlov Media provides Internet, television and phone services to The Commons at Knoxville, a complex that specializes in apartments for students of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Early Sunday, WBIR, Knoxville's NBC affiliate, reported that FBI agents had searched the apartment of David Kernell, 20, at The Commons. David Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a longtime Democratic state legislator from Memphis.
Last week, David Kernell was linked to the hack of Palin's e-mail account on blogs and message boards after someone identified only as "Rubico" claimed to have accessed Palin's account by using Yahoo Inc.'s password reset feature. Others subsequently connected the Rubico handle to the e-mail address rubico10@yahoo.com, which was in turn linked to Kernell through Internet searches that uncovered connections between him, the username and the e-mail address on sites such as YouTube.
