I just came across a piece of meaningful information on the email story: the “hackers” were from the infamous /b/ messageboard at 4chan.org.

Before I get started explaining what /b/ is, I first have to state that the reason I put references to the “hacking” of Palin’s email in quotation marks is that technically, no real hacking was involved.  From what I understand, the person who accessed Sarah’s email did so by guessing her password security questions correctly (These were, apparently, her birthday, zip code, and where she met her spouse, information that is easily found online), which isn’t hacking at all.  It’s not even really social engineering since there was only one person involved.  It’s the kind of thing anyone could do with three Google searches, but doesn’t because their morals tell them otherwise.  This is where /b/ comes in.

The denizens of 4chan /b/ are among the least well-understood groups on the internet.  Even calling them a “group” is wrong, as there is no organized structure.  4chan /b/ is simply a messageboard that offers full anonymity to all its inhabitants.  The anonymity and “anything goes” aesthetic of /b/ means that it is simultaneously a great bastion for the freest speech on the planet, an unending repository of the basest filth you can imagine, and a meetup spot for thousands of the most bored and amoral teenage white boys in the world.

There are going to be a lot of mischaracterizations in the mass media about /b/ being a “hackers’ den”; it is nothing of the sort.  Its notoriety and trouble-causing capacity arises strictly from the fact that its inhabitants are bored and tend to have very little moral or ethical conscience.  The “hacking” of Sarah Palin’s email was executed by one bored person who wanted to see what could be found.  There was no organized attack, there was no malicious intent… just one person, probably young, probably white, probably male, with nothing better to do on a Wednesday morning.  

The reason I’m pretty sure I’m right about this is that I’ve been there a few times myself.

Screenshot of smoking-gun /b/ thread