Covering the cyber crime beat

David Elbert of the Des Moines Register writes Sunday about Brian Krebs, who appears to be the only business journalist covering cyber crime on a full-time basis.

Elbert writes, “‘I’m seeing evidence of six to a dozen new victims a week, and that’s just from one organized crime gang,’ said Brian Krebs, who writes a blog, KrebsOnSecurity.com, that tracks cyber thefts, including the one from the Des Moines diocese.

“Krebs is a former Washington Post technology reporter. He’s the only journalist I know who tracks cyber crimes full time. A few days after Krebs wrote about the Des Moines theft, he posted an article about a similar theft of nearly $1 million from an arm of the University of Virginia.

“In the Des Moines theft, Krebs traced some of the stolen money to bank accounts in Ukraine. The Virginia money was transferred to China, he said.

“Only a handful of these kinds of cases get reported. Usually they involve public or semi-public institutions where some sort of public disclosure is required or expected. When businesses get hit, most of us never hear about it.”

Read more here.