These forums are mostly private, but Krebs certainly has access to them. There can really be no excuse for how he handled this.
There are multiple posts by people in different places claiming to have bought this phishing kit, and then being delivered totally non-functional vibecoded garbage. The vibecoded garbage is not the advertised product though, as the author never managed to get the AI to finish his project.
I do not doubt this story for a second. Its crazy Kerb's is basically freely advertising this blackhat slop.
His record has never been flawless, but the guy actually put in the work to learn Russian to be able to read these forums. He just doesn’t anymore.
Here we can see that Krebs is now willing to publish stories he hasn’t even attempted to verify