Having a father who’s the chairman of Tennessee’s House Government Operations Committee won’t help you much when you’ve wronged a vice presidential candidate. David Kernell of Knoxville, Tennessee pleaded not guilty in a federal court on Wednesday. Accused of intentionally accessing Palin’s e-mail account without authorization, he was later indicted for it and now faces up to 5 years of jail time, a $250,000 fine and three years parole.

The trial is set for December 16. We’ll keep you posted on the fate of poor David Kernell. We hope you’ve all learned a lesson here. You don’t mess with a politician, no matter how ridiculous he/she might be.

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It didn’t take long before the person responsible for hacking into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account was traced.  Thanks to the wonders of IP addresses, the one responsible for the intrusion was traced back to an ISP of a Knoxville, Tennessee student housing complex that is now under federal investigation.

Acting upon a search warrant early Sunday morning, the FBI showed up at the apartment of the 20-year old student and son of a Democratic state representative while he was hosting a party. Whether or not the FBI got in on some beer pong has yet to be announced.  No worries for the alleged hacker who, if found guilty, will serve only a light sentence due to a legal loophole regarding email that has been read, but not discarded.

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For the opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympics, the Beijing committee included RFID chips with spectators’ passport information and home/e-mail addresses in each ticket to prevent counterfeits and hacker intrusions. Like the RFID-driven Japanese urn system, the Beijing system makes sure that anyone who isn’t supposed to be there, won’t. Much like U.S. airport security, if you were a foreigner with an RFID ticket, you’d still get the ill treatment as if you were up to no good.

According to a Dutch businessman, he was asked to drink his sunscreen to prove it wasn’t an explosive and when he explained that he couldn’t drink sunscreen, he was let through without further inquiry. “The security was less than professional and not completely thorough,” he said.

That really does sound just like airport security here in the states. One time, I was forced to eat a bar of soap simply because it was the same color as Anthrax. After eating it, they let me through. When I went through the gate, I started vomiting up a foamy white solution. This led them to believe I was a terrorist. What a horrible vacation that was.

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Needless to say a hacker conference can take a lot out of a geek. That’s why this chill spot was put in. It makes watching the conferences upstairs relaxing, while hanging around in a hammock. If you had a computer you could partake in the humorous messages that would appear at the bottom of the screen displaying the speeches. The folks at the conference provided a web link that turned the hammock chill spot into a slew of comments displayed at the bottom of the screen from anyone using the site. “My ass hurts” and “there is a dildo missing from the art display” were two of the funnier comments made as everyone lounged around fiddling with their laptops.

Hackers are a different breed of humans. They’re not into vanilla cola or Red Bull energy drinks. They stay away from the mainstream bullshit and rarely leave their router-filled lairs. This is why a drink like Club-Mate (pronounced “Klub Mah-Tay”) is not only the drink of choice here at the Last HOPE Conference, but it’s also a big hit with the hacker crowd in Germany.

We bought one for four bucks, which is a reasonable price considering the size of this thing, but after trying it, we realized we prefer beer. And while the bottle claims it’s an acquired taste with “You get used to it!” printed on the label, we still prefer beer more! Beer is flavorful and makes all the ugly chicks look gorgeous. All that Club-Mate does is pump your body full of caffeine and make you twitch while you hunch over a computer. Like I said, great for hackers.

If you’ve ever signed up for a bank account or Paypal account online, you’ve probably noticed how they deposit a small amount of change into your checking account for verification purposes. It’s usually under 50 cents and doesn’t amount to much. But what if someone programmed a way to automate the enrollment process with these sites and used false names to generate multiple accounts

That is exactly what one Michael Largent from California did. Largent set out to scam Google, E-Trade, Paypal and a slew of other companies for their cash. In the end, he ended up netting over $50,000 from verification deposits. If he hadn’t used false information, Michael wouldn’t be facing wire fraud charges. Currently, he’s free on bail and there’s no word if he has been ordered to pay the money back.

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We have yet get caught up in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD chaos as of yet, still sticking with the normal DVD. A certain hacker seems to have taken his love for HD-DVD a little too far. The hack in question redirects users to the HD-DVD site when they try to access the main Blu-ray site.

And while redirecting all www.blu-raydisc.com traffic to www.hddvd.org isn’t likely to pose any long-term consequence on either company, it does make Blu-ray look pretty bad on a security standpoint. — Andrew Dobrow

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What is the world coming to? iPod vending machines?! Yeah..sure it’s ridiculously cool to be living in a world where you can grab an iPod from a vending machine, but who in their right mind would invest $400 in a machine that most of us are afraid to put $2 in to get a back of chips or cookies? Another question. How long until a curious hacker discovers how to trick the vending machine? Surely not long. We are not surprised in the least that iPods are now being sold through automated vending merchants, but is this idea really going to take off? Or are we just bearing witness to a marketing strategy that strikes while the iron is hot? — Andrew Dobrow

iPod vending machines rake in the moolah [Newlaunches]