This broad scope attracts a diverse community that includes not only cybercriminals but also privacy advocates, researchers, and curious users interested in the darker corners of the internet. The forum’s structure encourages open dialogue through community moderation and user voting, which helps maintain balance and fosters honest debate. Its emphasis on anonymity and strong encryption safeguards users’ identities and posts, reinforcing trust within the community. With active user engagement, Dread serves as a pulse point for the dark web’s evolving trends and sentiments, standing out as an influential, less specialized hub where a broad spectrum of voices intersect.
The Top Illicit Activities And Content On XSS
It’s somewhere Google and Bing don’t index, and you need special tools to get to it. It was developed with both privacy and usability in mind, choosing to stick to a common user interface to match the likes of Reddit, but without the added security issues that are involved with the use of JavaScript. CryptBB, which launched in 2017, started out life as a private English-speaking hacking forum known for its rigorous application policy, only accepting members who passed an interview.
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We track forums, messaging channels, underground marketplaces, and covert social networks to detect real-time data leaks, brand impersonations, insider threats, digital fraud, and more. Our reports are clear, actionable, and tailored to each organization’s unique needs. By leveraging both dark web monitoring and threat intelligence, organizations can better protect themselves from cybercriminals.
Industries That Benefit The Most From Dark Web Monitoring 2025
For example, perpetrators of trafficking and cyber attacks use the dark web to disguise their actions. The US Naval Research Laboratory developed The Onion Routing (Tor) project in the late 90s. A network browser gives you access to sites with the ‘.onion’ registry operator. It is easily accessible by the general public and requires no special configuration.
- The website has an advanced search filter and an easy-to-use interface, which makes it easy to find what someone is looking for.
- Since active forum users are often wanted by law enforcement or security agencies, monitoring them offers useful information to stop these criminals in their tracks.
- We started by understanding what Dread is and how it serves as a secure alternative for those seeking anonymous communication online.
- Threat actors such as CyberNiggers and USDoD, known for their claims of breaching major organizations, contribute to the forum’s notoriety and the broader implications for global cybersecurity.
- The threat can extend to your entire network of devices connected to the internet.
What Is Dark Web Monitoring, And How Does It Work?
Bear in mind too that laws about freedom of speech and censorship vary from country to country, which is part of the reason the dark web exists in the first place. Even if you’re using a private, anonymized crypto wallet, there are other ways your identity can be revealed—even if it’s something as simple as letting a personal detail slip in an instant message. Cybersecurity has to also cover everything physically on your computer too—which law enforcement or government authorities might have the right to seize if they come calling. If you want to be untraceable and undetectable, connecting to the dark web via the Tor browser is a major step towards that, but not the only step you’ll need. Bear in mind too, that your internet provider will be able to see you connecting to Tor nodes, even if it doesn’t know exactly what you’re doing. Many people install a VPN as well, but then you’re putting your trust in an additional third party to not track your activities or report them to anyone else.
It boasts a massive, highly active community discussing credential lists, email and password combos, hacking tools, vulnerable software, and much more. The forum is multilingual, featuring 12 language-specific subforums—with the French section surprisingly being the most active. RiseUp is a top dark web website that offers secure email services and a chat option. It was created in 1999 as a secure communication platform for people and groups working on liberatory social change. The platform is protected from government interference and malicious attacks to protect the user.
It’s a part of the internet that’s less regulated and more shadowy, for better and for worse. The forum, which was launched in early 2018, is designed similarly to the popular open web forum Reddit. The forum aims to educate new hackers and cybercriminals to help them develop their skill sets and successfully pull off fraud attacks, phishing campaigns and more. FreeHacks is one of the most popular and one of the largest hacking forums on the web. This Russian community of hackers and cybercriminals gathers its resources to expand and solidify their knowledge base.
New Bitsight TRACE Security Research
Sections dedicated to social engineering and scams further support various fraud schemes, enhancing its reputation as a comprehensive platform for illicit activities. This combination of high user engagement, marketplace reliability, and a broad catalog of hacking resources sets Nulled.to apart as a central player in the dark web’s data leak sales landscape. The dark web, a small but complex part of the deep web, is accessible only through special browsers like Tor, which focus heavily on preserving user anonymity and secrecy. Though it makes up about 0.01% of the internet, it hosts a wide range of sites including forums, marketplaces, and illegal services. In early 2025, daily user activity on the dark web surged from 2 million to over 3 million, reflecting growing interest in cybercrime and illicit trades.
DarknetKing (darknetkingcom)
As a threat exposure management platform, it continuously monitors dark web forums, Telegram channels, and illegal marketplaces, alerting about risks that might otherwise go unnoticed. Of course, many other underground forums focus on criminal activity like drug trafficking, illegal goods, and even more severe offenses such as human exploitation and smuggling. However, the forums outlined above are the most relevant for businesses, as they’re where threat actors target and exploit sensitive data and corporate infrastructure. People post, reply, and build status, but instead of talking about hobbies or tech, they trade hacking tips, leaked data, and ransomware services. To join, new users might need an invite from someone inside or prove their worth by sharing something valuable, like compromised data or hacking tools.
Throughout this guide, we’ve explored several crucial aspects of safely navigating and participating in the Dread forum, a prominent dark web platform known for its emphasis on privacy and security. We started by understanding what Dread is and how it serves as a secure alternative for those seeking anonymous communication online. We then detailed the procedures for safely accessing Dread using tools like Tor and VPNs, and discussed the importance of adhering to community guidelines while maintaining your anonymity and security. Participating in forums on the dark web, such as Dread, requires careful navigation of legal boundaries.
PromptLock Ransomware: How AI Is Lowering The Bar For Cybercrime
Although most people are unaware of this part of the Internet, the dark web is an important part of the Internet. Since websites are kept unindexed here, it is more complex and difficult to search for source content and obtain data than the clear web. While many people use this hidden part of the Internet, many use it to carry out illegal activities.
Below, we explore some of the most infamous forums on the dark web, examining their histories, operations, and the significant impact they have on the world of cybercrime. Monitoring dark web forums is an important source for analyzing current cyber threats. Today, although threat actors broadcast their illegal activities via applications such as telegram, dark web forums are still one of the current content sources. According to the analyses made by ThreatMon analysts, there are important findings detected and obtained from dark web forums as the first source. With the detection of exploits, zero days, malware, etc. content obtained from dark web forums, proactive intelligence is developed by analyzing current malware. Dark web forums are online discussion platforms that operate within the dark web, a part of the internet that requires special software like Tor to access and is not indexed by traditional search engines.
Originally Known As DaMaGeLaB, XSS Is One Of The Longest-running Dark Web Forums
The biggest reason malicious users prefer to use the dark web is that special software is used to enter the web pages here, providing anonymity and privacy. Dark web forums generally contain illegal trade, malware, 0day, exploit, database leakage, credit card information, etc. Dark web forums are one of the important sources for threat intelligence research at this point.
It remains unclear whether this was an exit scam or the result of law enforcement activity. Listings on the marketplace had included drugs, fullz, stolen and counterfeit items, gold bars, payment cards and much more. You can read our in-depth report on the closure of the Tor2Door market here. Some new forums joined the underground scene in 2023, including BlackForums, a blackhat forum that specializes in database leakage and contains discussions about malware and tools. The forum remains comparatively small with just over 2,500 members but is noteworthy for partnering up with the ThreatSec hacktivist group. Bitsight’s 2025 deep web intelligence shows how cybercriminals are multiplying, diversifying—and getting smarter.
