Um, I'm pretty sure that he reset her password to popcorn. He knew her birthdate, her husband's birthdate, and some other personal information that's publicly available. Then he reset the password and BAMMO, in he got.
Just sayin'.
You're right. According to arstechnica.com
"The password she chose was not "popcorn". That was what the "hacker" chose, then posted it to /b/ for all to peruse. Other reports say the "hacker" used the security question to gain access to the 'password change' feature, so there is no way they could have known the original password."
My mistake.
She's not entirely without blaim though.
"Though criticism of Palin's use of the Yahoo account had largely focused on worries about transparency, Donald Mitchell, the attorney for an Alaska citizen-watchdog who had been seeking disclosure of the governor's e-mail records, also broached security concerns. "There's a reason the governor should be using her own official e-mail channels, because of security and encryption," Mitchell
told The Washington Post, "She's running state business out of Yahoo?"