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What is the Dark Web Forum? Why do These Exist?
The internet has a hidden side—a vast and anonymous network called the dark web. While it’s a vital space for those seeking free expression and privacy, it also harbors the digital underworld. Dark web forums are the clandestine meeting grounds for this shadowy world. They're where cybercriminals, hackers, and malicious actors gather, safe from the prying eyes of the surface web.
These forums are more than just simple message boards; they are hidden online spaces where anonymity is crucial. Accessing them typically requires specialized tools designed to enhance privacy and conceal identities. This focus on anonymity, while used for legitimate reasons by some, also makes these platforms attractive for various illegal activities.
Dark web forums are known to be places where individuals engage in illicit trading and discussions about illegal services. Law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals sometimes monitor these forums as part of their efforts to understand and combat online crime, using the information gathered as threat intelligence.
We recommend you take a look at our Top 10 Dark Web Search Engine blog post that we have previously published.
Is Monitoring Dark Web Forums Important? Why?
Monitoring dark web forums is an important part of cyber threat intelligence because it provides proactive, external visibility into criminal activities, data leaks, and emerging cyber threats. By tracking activity on these forums, cybersecurity analysts can anticipate attacks, protect sensitive information, and enhance incident response capabilities.
Key reasons for dark web forum monitoring - Early threat detection: Threat actors and cybercriminals often discuss, plan, and announce their activities on dark web forums before an attack is launched. By monitoring these discussions, security teams can get an early warning about potential threats targeting their organization or industry. This information can reveal a planned attack, allowing for preventative measures to be put in place.
- Identification of compromised data: After a data breach, sensitive information such as customer records, employee credentials, and intellectual property is frequently sold or traded on dark web forums and marketplaces. Monitoring these spaces enables organizations to quickly detect if their data has been compromised and to take swift action, such as alerting affected parties and forcing password resets.
- Insight into criminal tactics and tools: Dark web forums are a hub for threat actors to share tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), as well as to sell malware, ransomware, and exploit kits. Monitoring these activities provides security teams with valuable context about how cybercriminals operate, enabling them to improve their security posture and develop stronger defenses.
- Mitigation of third-party risk: Many cyberattacks originate from a vulnerability in a third-party vendor or supply chain partner. Dark web monitoring can uncover discussions or data breaches related to your suppliers, providing an early warning that could affect your own company. This helps in managing third-party risks and protecting your organization from indirect threats.
- Protection of brand reputation: If your company's name or brand is being misused for phishing scams, brand impersonation, or other fraudulent activities, it will likely be discussed on dark web forums. Proactive monitoring can help you detect this activity early, allowing you to act quickly to protect your reputation and customer trust.
- Faster incident response: In the event of an attack, having intelligence from dark web forums can be crucial for an effective and swift response. It can provide insights into the scope of the breach, the methods used by the attackers, and even help in tracking down the individuals responsible. This information can dramatically shorten incident response and recovery time.
How does Onionlinks Monitor the Dark Forums?
Onionlinks dark web monitoring service enables proactive detection and monitoring of corporate information or sensitive credentials shared on forums. Cyber Threat Intelligence Analysts perform open source intelligence (OSINT) analyses on the dark web to gather clues and better understand threats. It allows Onionlinks to mitigate risks, protect customer data, and reduce the impact of cyber threats such as identity theft, fraud, or data breaches.
You can protect your company with onionlinks dark web monitoring to safeguard your reputation.
Top 10 Dark Web Forums to Monitor
1. Breach
![[Image: breach-dark-web-forum-1024x449.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/breach-dark-web-forum-1024x449.jpg)
In 2022, following the closure of RaidForums, a very popular forum founded in 2015, Breached was established in a similar format to RaidForums. After the FBI arrested Pompompurin, the owner of Breached, in March 2023, Breached was also seized and the forum was closed and moved to a new forum called Breached, which was also closed in March 2023. To fill the void left by these closures, a new forum called ‘Exposed’ was opened. The forum with a similar theme and name was opened to users, and this brought to mind the question of whether it was a game of the FBI.
Although the new forums were similar to the Breach forum, the fear that the new site was secretly monitored and possibly managed by the FBI caused many former Breached members to be suspicious. The newly launched Breach soon reached many users and shared many database leaks. It is still one of the most important forums and users can create an account with free membership. With the credit system in the forum, users can obtain credits. The most popular topic of the Breach forum is database leakage, but it also takes an active role in illegal sales. At the time of this report, the current Breach forum has 25,982 threads, 273,586 posts, and 78,687 members.
2. Exploitin
![[Image: exploitin-dark-web-forum-1024x444.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/exploitin-dark-web-forum-1024x444.jpg)
In 2022, following the closure of RaidForums, a very popular forum established in 2015, Exploitin, an important Russian forum, has been actively used for cyber attacks and crimes since about 2012. Within the forum, there are regular sales of categorized cybercrime tools, trading in database leaks, credit card information leaks, malware sales, and even ransomware sales for ransom services. Compared to other forums, their membership policy is stricter. New memberships require a fee and an invitation from an existing member. At the time of writing, the Exploitin forum has 213,672 topics, 1,337,208 posts, and 60,856 members.
3. XSS
![[Image: xss-dark-web-forum-1024x521.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/xss-dark-web-forum-1024x521.jpg)
XSS, a Russian forum, has been actively used for cyber attacks since about 2013. The forum contains a significant amount of exploits, zero-day exploits, and malware. The forum is also popular for access sales and contains illegal sales that can be used for first access in Ransomware activities. Again, like the Breach forum, XSS offers free user account creation. There is a credit system for transactions within the forum. When writing this report, the XSS forum has 81,002 threads, 625,178 messages, and 58,902 members.
4. Nulled
![[Image: nulled-dark-web-forum-1024x556.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/nulled-dark-web-forum-1024x556.jpg)
Nulled is a dark web forum that has been operating since 2015. To date, this forum has 5,131,238 users and hosts 33 million posts. Nulled dark web forum attracts attention with fake identity documents, malware creation tools, and databases. In 2016, as a result of a data breach by cyber hackers, 9.45 GB of personal information of users was disclosed.
5. Altenen
![[Image: altenen-dark-web-forum-1024x499.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/altenen-dark-web-forum-1024x499.jpg)
Founded in 2008, Altenen has 1.3 million users and 1,264,546 posts. The Altenen dark web forum, which is famous for credit card fraud, also produces fake IDs and passports. In 2018, the founder was caught and the first forum was closed. After the arrest of the founder, the dark web forum continues to be actively used, managed by another user with the address Altenen.nz.
6. Hydra Market
![[Image: hydra-market-dark-web-forum-1024x496.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/hydra-market-dark-web-forum-1024x496.jpg)
Hydra Market was founded in 2015 and has 17 million users to date. The dark web platform, which is actively used in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States countries, hosts forged documents, data breaches, databases, illegal products, and more. To access the Hydra Market, it remained strong, secure, and confidential by continuing its activities with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin over the Tor network. In 2022, due to operations carried out by German and US law enforcement agencies, Hydra Market was closed, and its servers and $543 million in cryptocurrency were seized. Hydra Market became active again after a while.
7. Sinister
![[Image: sinister-dark-web-forum-1024x531.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sinister-dark-web-forum-1024x531.jpg)
Sinister is a dark web forum founded in 2016 and has 62 thousand users to date. Sinister attracts the attention of its users with topics such as various tools, social engineering techniques, and cracked programs.
8. Cracked
![[Image: cracked-dark-web-forum-1024x464.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cracked-dark-web-forum-1024x464.jpg)
Cracked was founded in 2016 and has 4.27 million users. The Cracked Dark Web forum hosts posts on exploit development, zero-day exploits, user logins, and cybersecurity. Cracked is not an illegal platform and is used by cybersecurity experts and penetration testers.
9. Cracking
![[Image: cracking-dark-web-forum-1024x481.jpg]](https://threatmon.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cracking-dark-web-forum-1024x481.jpg)
Cracking is one of the most important forums of its kind. This is a forum where cybercriminals can discuss various cracking tools, combo lists and dumps, tools, proxies, premium accounts, and more. When writing this report, the Cracking forum has 226,815 threads, 2,084,807 messages, and 484,239 members.
10. Leakbase
LeakBase, which has an important place for database leaks, emerged in 2023. The forum focuses on database leaks and includes a community that challenges the Breach forum. The forum is free to join and member status can be upgraded within the forum. Active database leaks are shared in the forum mainly by the staff team. When we look at the content, it is seen that there are user accounts, logs, various software, tools, and training pieces other than database leaks. When writing this report, the LeakBase forum has 14,275 threads, 93,258 messages, and 45,946 members.
11. Velox Market:
is the darknet’s most trusted hub for drugs, counterfeit money, cloned cards, Fullz, fake IDs, dumps, and hacking tools. Backed by verified vendors, unbreakable escrow, BTC/XMR payments, and 24/7 support, Velox delivers fast, secure, and anonymous shopping with encrypted messaging and rapid order processing. Safe. Simple. Reliable.
![[Image: veloxmarket-300x146.png]](https://onionlinks.live/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/veloxmarket-300x146.png)
Market URL:
http://u2uaeeuh2hnvdo24jaojizy3x6j6r52v7...lid.onion/
Email: veloxmarket@proton.me
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