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Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

>but what more do you want from the guy?

By the time the December story was published, it seems that Krebs knew full well that his source was the person implicated in the crime to begin with. I would like to understand why he thought it was responsible to press forward while obfuscating this fact, and how he will handle similar situations moving forward. His thought process there will help inform me as to whether or not I can personally take him seriously on things of this nature in the future.

As it stands, I don't know if he learned anything from this, or if he still thinks that people that very well might have perpetrated the crime he's reporting on are reputable sources that he should post information from without question or disclaimer and the only reason this is posted is because he settled in court.

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many of Krebs's sources are criminals, often dropping their competitors info in Brian's lap as a way to get ahead.

Brian's a willing and witting participant in this behaviour, even encourages it, because it gives him more stories.

Yeah, this reflects my views too. He's using the veneer or pretext of journalism and reporting the truth in order for him to cover sloppy sourcing.

> sing the veneer or pretext of journalism and reporting the truth in order for him to cover sloppy sourcing

Getting tips from criminals is not sloppy sourcing. There is verification that obviously failed here. We likely won't hear the full story until the prosecution and litigation cycles have turned.

To me, the issue isn't really that the source in question is a criminal - I think they might be a bit less reliable than the average person, but as others have noted, general people are pretty unreliable too.

But the fact that the source was also the person who has allegedly perpetrated the crimes going unmentioned and not being disclaimed to me is sloppy - even if there was additional verification done, if you are mentioning this source as the cornerstone of your article, I want to know about the vested interests that source has. Obviously, being the person that allegedly did it means you have A LOT of vested interest in how it is covered and what is revealed. If you want to talk yourself up and brag about it (which seems to be a given if you are telling a journalist about something you allegedly perpetrated) it is totally reasonable for people to be suspicious about how much is fact and how much is fiction. Humans like to exaggerate when talking themselves up.

Have you even met any Journalists?

I know a good number of them.

Most do a lot more source verification than Krebs these days, dropping/shelving stories if they can't find corroborating evidence.

Most for sure, but even then most I know aren’t checking everything, all the time.

Which leaves a lot of crap out there.

And most of the industry is busy trying to stay afloat and shoveling whatever random thing they can find. Only the top couple percent has the luxury of taking or leaving something juicy (if it isn’t obviously a trap).

That might seem like an indictment of Brian's ethics, but I'd argue that having criminals as sources is an unfortunate inevitability if you're going to have up-to-date reporting on a topic that is so heavily entangled with cybercrime.

Besides, it's not like non-criminal sources never lie.

It is fine to use criminal sources, but in this case the criminal was a primary party with a self interest. If you can’t disclose that and still wrote the story, it is a warning that you either need additional sources, or don’t publish.

There is nothing inherently wrong with using criminals (or other unreliable sources) as sources, most journalists in the space do so.

The issue arises when you report on it without clearly disclaiming/disclosing that its a single, unreliable source and that you have been unable to externally verify the facts.

Mistakes happen, and that's fine. But in recent years Brian has been getting a bit slipshod in his verification and disclosure practices, most likely due to competition in the space and the need to publish fast.

> it seems that Krebs knew full well that his source was the person implicated in the crime to begin with

I would say implicated in a crime. It wasn't entirely clear at the time that the crime was extortion. After all, its a very odd way to make money, as going public as a "loose cannon who fucked a company by being so toxically bad at their job they brought down a company" is not the greatest CV experience post.

I'm still not entirely clear how much of the architecture described was bullshit.

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