His entire beat is based on untrustworthy sources. What makes him special is that he is hanging out on Russian language carder forums and the like, monitoring the gossip and identifying new threats and patterns of behavior. That is the value that he adds, and it's a reasonably big value.

In this case, he got played, but if he stops trying to work with untrustworthy sources he stops doing his job.

>What makes him special is that he is hanging out on Russian language carder forums and the like, monitoring the gossip and identifying new threats and patterns of behavior. That is the value that he adds, and it's a reasonably big value.

That's also not what he did in the case from my understanding . The person contacted him. He didn't verify it from secondary sources on the underground, or get access to proof the the hack. I think people trust him because he usually is able to provide some verification, but failed to do so in this case.