December 29, 2016

Hard to believe it’s time to celebrate another go ’round the Sun for KrebsOnSecurity! Today marks exactly seven years since I left The Washington Post and started this here solo thing. And what a remarkable year 2016 has been!

7-2016

The word cloud above includes a sampling of tags used in stories on KrebsOnSecurity throughout the past year. It’s been a wild one, riddled with huge attacks, big cybercriminal busts and of course a whole mess of data breaches.

The biggest attack of all — the 620 Gbps distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assault against this site on Sept. 22 — resulted in KrebsOnSecurity being unplugged for several days. The silver lining? I now have a stronger site and readership. Through it all, the community that has grown up around this site was extremely supportive and encouraging. I couldn’t be prouder of this community, so a huge THANK YOU to all of my readers, both new and old.

It’s fair to say that many of the subjects in the word cloud above are going to continue to haunt us in 2017, particularly ransomware, CEO fraud and DDoS attacks. I am hopeful to have more on the “who” behind the September attacks against this site in the New Year. I promise it’s going to be a story worth waiting for. Stay tuned.

Also, many of you have asked whether we can have a more responsive theme on this blog. It is true that the site hasn’t been updated appearance-wise since it launched seven years ago, and that it’s long overdue for a facelift. We were on track to have that done by today’s blog post, but for a variety of reasons this will have to wait until the early New Year. Thank you for your patience.

My aim from the beginning with this site has been to focus on producing original, impactful reporting on computer security and cybercrime, and to keep the content free for anyone and everyone. That remains my intention. For those of you who have Adblock installed, please consider adding an exception for my site: For security reasons (see malvertising for more info), this site has not allowed third-party content since late 2011, and all of the handful of ads that run here are hosted locally and have been fully vetted.

As always, below are links to some of the most-read stories on the site this year. Thanks again for your readership, encouragement and support!

Oct. 21: Hacked Cameras, DVRs Powered Today’s Massive Internet Outage

Oct. 3: Who Makes the IoT Things Under Attack?

Sept. 25: The Democratization of Censorship

Sept. 13: Secret Service Warns of ‘Periscope’ Skimmers

Sept. 10: Alleged vDOS Proprietors Arrested in Israel

Sept. 8: Israeli Online Attack Service ‘vDOS’ Earned $600,000 in Two Years

Aug. 26: Inside ‘The Attack that Almost Broke the Internet’

Feb. 18: This is Why People Fear the Internet of Things

Feb. 16: The Great EMV Fakeout: No Chip for You!

Jan. 30: Sources: Security Firm Norse Corp. Imploding


131 thoughts on “Happy Seventh Birthday, KrebsOnSecurity!

  1. Shawna R

    Grats Brian! I’ve been reading this blog for years 🙂

  2. Marc M

    Many happy returns, Brian, one of the best investigative journalists in the world, and always exiting to read.

  3. Stan stahl

    Congratulations Brian. Thanks for keeping us all informed for all these years. You were there when few others were. Your continued knowledge and expertise sets the bar for cyber journalism!!! Cheers and best wishes for many more years of KrebsOnSecurity.

  4. Johnny C.

    Congrats and keep up your great work! Your industry insights have been very valuable to me and my career.

  5. Ozman

    Hurra! I have been big fan of your since 2003. Yes you also have a huge fans outside USA. I’m one of them

  6. Silas

    I see you have become a ‘part’ of 2016 with your ‘clickbait’ as in wait for my next big expose !!

    Ha ha just kidding, love the fact you provide IMHO real news

    Congrats and ongoing success.

    From Down Under

  7. timoty

    Happy birthday Krebsonsecurity! WIthout you I would know far less about security matters.

  8. Fritz

    Congratulations Brian. Keep up the good work, we really need more people like you. YOU ARE A STUD!

  9. erica

    You are the first website i have ever whitelisted on my two adblockers. Congratulations on your anniversary, no surprise to me as high quality as your content and website are.

  10. JCitizen

    Hard to believe it has been 7 years! Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!! (also) 😀

  11. Vishwa

    This blog is one of my favorite to keep up with latest on the cyberspace.

    Congratulations to you Brian!!
    Thank you from India

  12. Rimutis

    These were fantastic years I hope 🙂 I’ve been following krebsonsecurerity.com for the last 5 years and there is always nice to see new articles 🙂

  13. Fin-Man

    Brian, please please please don’t give a facelift to the website in the way that is common nowadays. This kind of “oldfashioned” website is extremely easy to read and follow. The Modern UIs for websites are user-unfriendly, usually their only purpose is to follow and stalk the readers to be able to cash with advertising.
    I’d hate to leave yet another website just because it has become “unreadable”.

    1. Randy

      Another second for that! This web site is very clean and easy to navigate. Why does it need a facelift? The only thing I can think of that I would ask for is a dark mode like Ars Technica offers, but I don’t see why it needs any redesign.

      Thank you for the wonderful content and great work!

      1. Nonsense

        What Brian Krebs’ site needs is JavaScript, php (and lots of it — probably not Zend though), and a smattering of CSS for good measure. Much sexier. I also recommend adding more referrers and putting that PayPal button back if you haven’t yet. You should be getting paid; you provide a very important service to us Americans (and others, I assume).

        Happy Anniversary! 🙂

  14. Swift

    Good work Brian. 2016 raised the bar even higher.
    Keep it coming.

  15. Robert.Walter

    Congratulations to your milestone and thanks for all the good lessons and interesting reading. All the best to you good sir!

  16. Mike K

    Congrats on 7 years. Keep up the great reporting!

    I am curious to see what sort of facelift the site is getting. I have liked the clean look of it.

  17. Giovanni

    I’ve learned a lot from this site.
    Congratulations and happy new year from Italy.

  18. Todd

    You do awesome work. I’m glad you left the post as well! Win Win in my book.

  19. Mustang7173

    And, another second for that! A great site that explains how cyber crime works. Thank for site to help make the internet a bit safer!

  20. Casey

    It takes a lot of courage to go off on your own like you did, and also to take on this type of reporting. This world definitely needs more people like you!

  21. Jeffrey Simmon

    Congrats Brian. I frequently share your articles with my customers and associates as examples of thought leadership in the Identify, Authentication, and Security spaces. Looking forward to your insightful viewpoints in 2017

  22. JimV

    Happy Birthday to your website…and hopefully many more to come, Brian!

  23. Frank Spina

    Congratulations Brian!

    From the beginning, I haven’t missed a day of checking your website/blog to see what your latest golden reporting is. I have learned much from your blogs so that I have become “a defensive computer user with both eyes wide open” and have benefitted greatly from that.

    Each year about the time of your anniversary I send a token donation because I know this site doesn’t run by itself. My point is that I actually enjoy sending those donations as the best bucks that I spend on the internet.

    Thank you Brian!

  24. Jim

    Happy 2016 and hope for a greater 2017.

    In addition to being a regular, I assigned this site to employees using computers. It’s far far the best to lose an hour or so of ‘production’ and have them understand, and then follow, the security rules.

    BTW, like the site as-is, so please don’t change for changes’ sake.

  25. JoNoRo

    Happy anniversary, happy New Year, & thanx for your timely & comprehensive reporting…

Comments are closed.