Brian Krebs

Brian Krebs is an American journalist, born in 1972, in Alabama. His father worked in the intelligence industry, and his mother was a homemaker.

Krebs attended Fairfax High School, in Fairfax, Virginia, and then George Mason University, where he received a degree in political science in 1994.

In 1996, Krebs went to work for the circulation department of The Washington Post. This was primarily a department charged with fielding calls from subscribers who either wanted to stop or start delivery of their paper or who wanted to lodge a complaint about the failed delivery of a paper (as a youth, Krebs spent nearly four years regularly delivering The Washington Post to dozens of customers in the Springfield area.)

After 6 months of working in the circulation department, Krebs obtained a position in the Post mailroom as a copy aide who split his time as a dictationist transcribing stories from sports games to files from reports in Bosnia.

From there, Krebs was hired as an editorial assistant on The Washington Post's Editorial page, primarily responsible for processing Letters to the Editor and occasionally laying out the Letters to the Editor pages, including the Saturday political cartoons page and the Monday Letters to the Editor page. In 1998, Krebs was hired on as an Editorial Aide to the Washington Post Financial Desk. In both positions, Krebs was a contributing writer on a number of stories at different sections of the paper, including the Style, Fast Forward, Metro and Financial sections.

In late 1999, Krebs accepted a staff writer position at Newsbytes.com, a technology newswire service owned by The Washington Post.

He worked for NewsBytes.com (owned by the "Washington Post") until it was dissolved in 2002, at which point he was hired as a regular reporter. He is best known for writing about security issues for the "Washington Post" [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix SecurityFix blog] , which he founded in March 2005. Dozens of the articles that Krebs has written for the website have also been printed in the hardcopy "Washington Post" newspaper itself.

In May 2005, Krebs interviewed the intruders responsible for hacking Paris Hilton's T-Mobile Sidekick. It was discovered that the intruders were also responsible for an incident at Lexis-Nexis which netted them personal information on over 300,000 individuals.

In August 2006, Krebs had an exclusive interview with the SecureWorks researchers who demonstrated a wireless exploit on the MacBook( "Hijack a MacBook in 60 Seconds or Less" [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/hijacking_a_macbook_in_60_seco.html story] ). Krebs reported that he witnessed security researcher David Maynor hijiack a MacBook with default configuration evidently through a flaw in the native Airport wireless drivers.

Selected articles from the "Washington Post"

* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400218.html "The Long and the Short of Microsoft's Patches"] , January 16, 2006
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051900711.html "Paris Hilton Hack Started with Old-Fashioned Con"] , May 19, 2005
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051901844.html "Hackers Found Hilton's Phone An Easy Target"] , May 19, 2005
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051901854_pf.html "Data Thefts May Be Linked: Warrants served in LexisNexis Account Breach"] , May 20, 2005
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/hijacking_a_macbook_in_60_seco.html "Hijacking a MacBook in Sixty Seconds"] August 2, 2006
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/01/internet_explorer_unsafe_for_2.html "Internet Explorer Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006"] , January 4, 2007
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/03/tracking_the_password_thieves_1.html "Tracking the Password Thieves"] , March 14, 2007
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/03/they_told_you_not_to_reply.html" They Told You Not to Reply"] , March 21, 2007
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/10/mapping_the_russian_business_n.html "Mapping the Russian Business Network"] , October 13, 2007
* [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/08/report_slams_us_host_as_major.html "Report Slams U.S. Host As Major Source of Badware"] , August 28, 2008
* [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/08/report_slams_us_host_as_major.html "EstDomains: A Sordid History and a Storied CEO"] , September 8, 2008

Awards

* 2004 Carnegie Mellon CyLab Cybersecurity Journalism Award of Merit [ [http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/default.aspx?id=148 2004 Cybersecurity Journalism Awards :: CyLab ] ]
* In 2005, CNET News.com listed Security Fix as one of the top 100 blogs, saying, "Good roundup of significant security issues. The Washington Post's Brian Krebs offers a userful, first-person perspective." [ [http://news.com.com/2311-10784_3-113620.html News.com's Blog 100 | CNET News.com ] ]

References

* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/ SecurityFix]
* [http://news.com.com/2311-10784_3-113620.html CNET News.Com "Blog 100" review]

Notes