5 ms·

I run a cybersecurity company and I’ve had drinks with Krebs at various events over the years. He’s the real deal, digging up dirt on the people who ruin everyt

by ttul 2y ago

I run a cybersecurity company and I’ve had drinks with Krebs at various events over the years. He’s the real deal, digging up dirt on the people who ruin everything for everyone and risking his life in the process for a minuscule payoff. I don’t know why he does it; I suppose it’s just the journalist’s passion. A really nice guy in person too.

anitil 2y ago
I didn't realise Krebs was a person, I thought it was a collection of people using a unified moniker. To your point though, we're lucky to have 'unreasonable' people like him, I know I don't have the courage
- SnorkelTan 2y ago
  His first name is Brian. That’s his picture at the top. I can’t think of any other groups or organizations that have the persona of a single person. Can anyone point to an example? Genuinely curious about this.
  - molenzwiebel 2y ago
    Previously, Ray Wenderlich.
  - drfuchs 2y ago
    Mavis Beacon.
  - Scoundreller 2y ago
    I think it’s on the down low when that’s done.
  - mikebike 2y ago
    Does "Nicolas Bourbaki" count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
    - devin 2y ago
      This is IMO an excellent example, and the one I came to post.
  - Physkal 2y ago
    I always felt Banksy was a collective of artists.
    - have_faith 2y ago
      Banksy is one person but he does have a team that executes most of his projects for/with him.
      - jillyboel 2y ago
        How do you know?
        MrMcCall 2y ago
        Well, for one, he can't film himself installing, e.g., fake artworks in the greatest museums in the world, as he did. And, for those who don't know, he is from Bristol, England, the home of the band Massive Attack. I've been digging their music lately, especially their songs with the late Sinead O'Connor.
        have_faith 2y ago
        There's multiple interviews from over the years with people that worked very closely with him, including the person who was his publicist for a long time (or a very similar role, I forget exactly). You can obviously decide that it's all part of some long game of deception but it's just not needed. No one is trying to arrest him here and they haven't seriously wanted to for over a decade, he's become an institution like baked beans.
        nickjantz 2y ago
        There’s video of the creation of the death of a phone box piece in his documentary and it was indeed a team of a few people.
  - dbtc 2y ago
    trump
  - recursivecaveat 2y ago
    I always thought Krebbs was a cybersecurity firm organized like a lawyer's or dentist's office, where there is one senior person on the cover but they are rarely involved with individual pieces of work. Crazy to learn it is just one person actually, they do a lot of good work.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Previously, McAffee (John McAfee) and Norton (Peter Norton).
    - dylan604 2y ago
      What about Kaspersky?
      - philipwhiuk 2y ago
        As it happens, Kaspersky was founded by three people, two of which are Kaperskys. For my mind they also haven't really traded on the 'individual security hero come to save you' person(which Norton definitely did in the early years).
    - creaturemachine 2y ago
      Peter Norton also put his photo on the box of AntiVirus.
  - geoduck14 2y ago
    Anything Elon Musk owns?
  - anonym29 2y ago
    The "Tyler Durden" author on ZeroHedge.
    - saghm 2y ago
      Using that name specifically has a bit of a different connotation than a generic one with no previous association like "Brian Krebs", though. If anything, it would be _more_ surprising to find out that someone going by the name Tyler Durden was just a single, regular person rather than something else going on.
  - tough 2y ago
    We don't know but some argue Banksy could be a team effort by now, part of the allure of anon work
    - 7speter 2y ago
      Same with Shakespeare, though that might’ve been disproven
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    I'm not parent, but at some point McAffee could refer to either the person or the company in the past. Whenever I read a Wolfram blog post that floats to the HN frontpage, I'm never certain if the post is entirely the effort of just Stephen Wolfram, or is a group effort.
  - nonameiguess 2y ago
    Happens in some artistic fields. Rodin didn't personally sculpt all of his sculptures. He directed the effort, but it was too much work for one person. I've seen Tom Clancy novels continue getting published even though he died over a decade ago. I think there are living authors doing the same thing, farming out production to ghost writers and just signing their name to the end product. There are famous examples in advice columns, sort of. I don't know that any of them have ever been written by different people at the same time, but they've maintained stable personas and names even as the writers have moved on or died. The original founder of the Dear Abby column was famously the twin sister of the second iteration of Ann Landers and they feuded for the rest of their lives over it. They're both dead now but the columns go on using the same byline name.
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    That Cringely guy who used to post an IT column.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 2y ago
      Cringely used to be a house name (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_name ) until one particular writer who had done most of the work managed to wrest it away for his use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely )
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bostik 2y ago
As a testament to his effectiveness at digging out the various online scammers, Akamai "had to" boot Krebs off of their service - the criminal gangs wanted him and his website out of the picture, and directed enough DDoS volume to overwhelm Akamai's ability to handle the load. IIRC Google intervened and offered to put him behind their shield system. Which I think tells more about Akamai than anything else. (Krebs's website address resolves to a Google network space.) In a fit of irony, even sometime after that event, Krebs's website still sported Akamai's DDoS protection service ads.
- bragr 2y ago
  To be fair to Akamai, they were providing their services to Krebs free of charge.
  - bostik 2y ago
    Sure, as a business decision it must have made perfect sense at the time - Akamai had bigger (paying) customers to protect. But that doesn't make the optics around it any less terrible. The message they were telegraphing with their combined actions was effectively: "We protect some of the largest corporations on the planet... but do not have the resources to keep an individual journalist and blogger online. Your business could be next." Whoever made the decision to pull service to Krebs should have also thrown their weight around to get those ads off of Krebs's website, because the compound outlook must have been hideous. (How do you get your ads off of a website without causing any more animosity? You quickly renegotiate an exclusivity deal and then choose not to run any ads at all on it.)
  - bravetraveler 2y ago
    Heavy is the head that wears the crown (or offers mitigation services advertised on a cybersecurity website) If Akamai can't (or won't) serve Krebs, I'm not sure I would want my business to pay them.
    - bravetraveler 2y ago
      Can't edit now, but a point to this I'd like to add: 'serve' could absolutely mean best-effort (ie: filtered, moved, null routed, whatever). I don't intend for compulsory weathering-of-the-storm (for the sake of PR), but rather... recognition that this is part and parcel with The Business. Maybe they/partners couldn't weather the storm. Report on it; Engineering blogs are all the rage. Being a CDN involves more than serving well-traveled bytes, getting paid, or touting how big of a reseller you are. Cat must chase mouse! Krebs is arguably the best customer for this; not e-commerce (can endure the worst outcome - no service) and has domain expertise. If I enter a protection scheme with someone who - after all - isn't all that tough... why would I/anyone continue? The internet is a big place.
sollniss 2y ago
He also doxxes random people just because their tool got abused as malware. There's a German community donating thousands to cancer research each year because "fuck Krebs" (Krebs means cancer in German).
- nilsherzig 2y ago
  Pr0s js crypto miner?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by ttul 2y ago

anitil 2y ago

I didn't realise Krebs was a person, I thought it was a collection of people using a unified moniker. To your point though, we're lucky to have 'unreasonable' people like him, I know I don't have the courage

SnorkelTan 2y ago
His first name is Brian. That’s his picture at the top. I can’t think of any other groups or organizations that have the persona of a single person. Can anyone point to an example? Genuinely curious about this.
- molenzwiebel 2y ago
  Previously, Ray Wenderlich.
- drfuchs 2y ago
  Mavis Beacon.
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  I think it’s on the down low when that’s done.
- mikebike 2y ago
  Does "Nicolas Bourbaki" count? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
  - devin 2y ago
    This is IMO an excellent example, and the one I came to post.
- Physkal 2y ago
  I always felt Banksy was a collective of artists.
  - have_faith 2y ago
    Banksy is one person but he does have a team that executes most of his projects for/with him.
    - jillyboel 2y ago
      How do you know?
      - MrMcCall 2y ago
        Well, for one, he can't film himself installing, e.g., fake artworks in the greatest museums in the world, as he did. And, for those who don't know, he is from Bristol, England, the home of the band Massive Attack. I've been digging their music lately, especially their songs with the late Sinead O'Connor.
      - have_faith 2y ago
        There's multiple interviews from over the years with people that worked very closely with him, including the person who was his publicist for a long time (or a very similar role, I forget exactly). You can obviously decide that it's all part of some long game of deception but it's just not needed. No one is trying to arrest him here and they haven't seriously wanted to for over a decade, he's become an institution like baked beans.
      - nickjantz 2y ago
        There’s video of the creation of the death of a phone box piece in his documentary and it was indeed a team of a few people.
- dbtc 2y ago
  trump
- recursivecaveat 2y ago
  I always thought Krebbs was a cybersecurity firm organized like a lawyer's or dentist's office, where there is one senior person on the cover but they are rarely involved with individual pieces of work. Crazy to learn it is just one person actually, they do a lot of good work.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  Previously, McAffee (John McAfee) and Norton (Peter Norton).
  - dylan604 2y ago
    What about Kaspersky?
    - philipwhiuk 2y ago
      As it happens, Kaspersky was founded by three people, two of which are Kaperskys. For my mind they also haven't really traded on the 'individual security hero come to save you' person(which Norton definitely did in the early years).
  - creaturemachine 2y ago
    Peter Norton also put his photo on the box of AntiVirus.
- geoduck14 2y ago
  Anything Elon Musk owns?
- anonym29 2y ago
  The "Tyler Durden" author on ZeroHedge.
  - saghm 2y ago
    Using that name specifically has a bit of a different connotation than a generic one with no previous association like "Brian Krebs", though. If anything, it would be _more_ surprising to find out that someone going by the name Tyler Durden was just a single, regular person rather than something else going on.
- tough 2y ago
  We don't know but some argue Banksy could be a team effort by now, part of the allure of anon work
  - 7speter 2y ago
    Same with Shakespeare, though that might’ve been disproven
- sangnoir 2y ago
  I'm not parent, but at some point McAffee could refer to either the person or the company in the past. Whenever I read a Wolfram blog post that floats to the HN frontpage, I'm never certain if the post is entirely the effort of just Stephen Wolfram, or is a group effort.
- nonameiguess 2y ago
  Happens in some artistic fields. Rodin didn't personally sculpt all of his sculptures. He directed the effort, but it was too much work for one person. I've seen Tom Clancy novels continue getting published even though he died over a decade ago. I think there are living authors doing the same thing, farming out production to ghost writers and just signing their name to the end product. There are famous examples in advice columns, sort of. I don't know that any of them have ever been written by different people at the same time, but they've maintained stable personas and names even as the writers have moved on or died. The original founder of the Dear Abby column was famously the twin sister of the second iteration of Ann Landers and they feuded for the rest of their lives over it. They're both dead now but the columns go on using the same byline name.
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  That Cringely guy who used to post an IT column.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 2y ago
    Cringely used to be a house name (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_name ) until one particular writer who had done most of the work managed to wrest it away for his use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely )

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bostik 2y ago

As a testament to his effectiveness at digging out the various online scammers, Akamai "had to" boot Krebs off of their service - the criminal gangs wanted him and his website out of the picture, and directed enough DDoS volume to overwhelm Akamai's ability to handle the load. IIRC Google intervened and offered to put him behind their shield system. Which I think tells more about Akamai than anything else. (Krebs's website address resolves to a Google network space.) In a fit of irony, even sometime after that event, Krebs's website still sported Akamai's DDoS protection service ads.

bragr 2y ago
To be fair to Akamai, they were providing their services to Krebs free of charge.
- bostik 2y ago
  Sure, as a business decision it must have made perfect sense at the time - Akamai had bigger (paying) customers to protect. But that doesn't make the optics around it any less terrible. The message they were telegraphing with their combined actions was effectively: "We protect some of the largest corporations on the planet... but do not have the resources to keep an individual journalist and blogger online. Your business could be next." Whoever made the decision to pull service to Krebs should have also thrown their weight around to get those ads off of Krebs's website, because the compound outlook must have been hideous. (How do you get your ads off of a website without causing any more animosity? You quickly renegotiate an exclusivity deal and then choose not to run any ads at all on it.)
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  Heavy is the head that wears the crown (or offers mitigation services advertised on a cybersecurity website) If Akamai can't (or won't) serve Krebs, I'm not sure I would want my business to pay them.
  - bravetraveler 2y ago
    Can't edit now, but a point to this I'd like to add: 'serve' could absolutely mean best-effort (ie: filtered, moved, null routed, whatever). I don't intend for compulsory weathering-of-the-storm (for the sake of PR), but rather... recognition that this is part and parcel with The Business. Maybe they/partners couldn't weather the storm. Report on it; Engineering blogs are all the rage. Being a CDN involves more than serving well-traveled bytes, getting paid, or touting how big of a reseller you are. Cat must chase mouse! Krebs is arguably the best customer for this; not e-commerce (can endure the worst outcome - no service) and has domain expertise. If I enter a protection scheme with someone who - after all - isn't all that tough... why would I/anyone continue? The internet is a big place.

sollniss 2y ago

He also doxxes random people just because their tool got abused as malware. There's a German community donating thousands to cancer research each year because "fuck Krebs" (Krebs means cancer in German).

nilsherzig 2y ago
Pr0s js crypto miner?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]