Some of the most consequential reporting in recent years has come from a specific kind of cyberattack known as a "hack-and-leak," in which attackers break into systems and then release the information they obtained. The Nieman Lab article describes this as a distinct category of attack, one that has blurred the line between criminal activity and news gathering.
For journalists, the rise of hack-and-leak operations has created a new craft: reporting on data that arrived through a breach. Reporters must now treat hackers as sources, which means verifying material that was stolen, weighing the motivations of those who provided it, and deciding how to present it to the public.
The article notes that Anonymous and allied collectives have been among the groups breaching corporations, and their actions have fed reporting. As this practice becomes more common, newsrooms are having to develop norms for handling information that comes from the grey zone of cyberattacks.