The Sarah Palin email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign when the Yahoo! personal email account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was subjected to unauthorized access. The hacker, David Kernell, had obtained access to Palin's account by looking up biographical details such as her high school and birthdate and using Yahoo!'s account recovery for forgotten passwords. Kernell then posted several pages of Palin's email on 4chan's /b/ board. Kernell, who at the time of the offense was a 20-year-old college student, is the son of longtime Democratic state representative Mike Kernell of Memphis.