Palin email hacker used freely available info to gain access

The hacker who breached GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin's email account (GOP prez candidate McCain doesn't know anything about or use computers or email according to his own previous statements) did it by using information freely available on the internet to gain access to her account and change the password to one of his own choosing.

How could such a thing be possible? The Today @ PC World blog explains:

A user identifying himself as "Rubico" claims all he did was select the option to reset the password on Yahoo Mail's interface. The service, he recalls, asked only for her birth date, zip code, and where she met her husband (which was her own self-chosen security question). That information can all easily be found with some basic Internet searching -- a task the hacker says took him less than an hour to complete.

According to political adversaries and critics in Alaska, Palin was using Yahoo email to circumvent government accountability safeguards placed on Alaska state email -- despite the fact that she touts herself as a reformer and advocate of open government. Of course, state run email services would presumably have a little tighter security than clueless giant Yahoo's notoriously lax email system.

Now, it's really worth noting that this is a woman who will be the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency, serving under a man who will be 76 at the end of a first term and 80 at the end of a second, should he win the presidency and survive.

Actuarial tables suggest that the chances of a man McCain's age passing before his 80th birthday (which is how old he would be at the end of a second term) are about 1 in 3. According to the Politico blog:

The odds of a 72-year-old man living four more years, or one full White House term, are better. But for a man who has lived 72 years and 67 days (McCain’s age on Election Day this year), there is between a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013, according to the Social Security Administration’s 2004 actuarial tables and the authoritative 2001 mortality statistics assembled by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.