This morning’s Observer column:
Brian Krebs is one of the unsung heroes of tech journalism. He’s a former reporter for the Washington Post who decided to focus on cybercrime after his home network was hijacked by Chinese hackers in 2001. Since then, he has become one of the world’s foremost investigators of online crime. In the process, he has become an expert on the activities of the cybercrime groups that operate in eastern Europe and which have stolen millions of dollars from small- to medium-size businesses through online banking fraud. His reporting has identified the crooks behind specific scams and even led to the arrest of some of them.
Krebs runs a blog – Krebs on Security – which is a must-read for anyone interested in these matters. Sometimes, one fears for his safety, because he must have accumulated so many enemies in the dark underbelly of the net. And last Tuesday one of them struck back.
The attack began at 8pm US eastern time, when his site was suddenly hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack…