Brian Krebs

Twenty years of investigations into cybercriminals have made Brian Krebs a recurring focal point for breach reporting, while exposing him to threats and litigation from subjects of his work.

Who they are

Brian Krebs is a cybersecurity journalist whose coverage and appearances in the corpus center on investigating breaches, fraud and the people behind them. Stories connect him to reporting on incidents involving companies such as Google and Apple, as well as to law-enforcement and cybercrime subjects including the FBI, Russian-linked activity and alleged Snowflake-client hackers.

The recent arc

Coverage reached its recent high in 2024Q3, amid a broader run of major security incidents: AT&T’s notification that phone records of nearly all cellular and landline customers were stolen, CrowdStrike outage remediation, a National Public Data breach, and Krebs’s report on a Google Workspace account-creation flaw. The period placed his reporting alongside the largest breach and infrastructure stories rather than a single standalone controversy.

Late 2024 shifted toward Krebs himself, with the Wall Street Journal profiling his two decades of identifying major cybercriminals, including individuals alleged to have hacked Snowflake clients. In early 2025, his own outlet returned to consumer-facing fraud mechanics, with a scammer explaining abuse of Apple’s support line to generate account-confirmation prompts.

The tension

The coverage repeatedly circles the conflict between aggressive cybersecurity reporting and the powerful or dangerous subjects it exposes. Krebs faces threats and manipulation, while Ubiquiti sued after he alleged it covered up a cyberattack; he later apologized and removed that coverage. His proximity to alleged Snowflake hackers and the earlier FBI LEEP-portal incident further shows how source cultivation, attribution and personal risk are inseparable in this reporting beat.

Why it matters

If breaches, identity fraud and account-abuse schemes continue to generate consequential stories, Krebs’s role illustrates the value—and vulnerability—of independent reporting that links technical failures to operators and victims. The Ubiquiti dispute also leaves a real constraint: accountability reporting can face sustained legal and reputational pressure, and the corpus does not establish how often such pressure changes future reporting choices.

Related: FBI · Google · Snowflake · LinkedIn · AT&T says it will begin notifying consumers about a data breach where