Cyber Security student and keen learner, writing articles for several other websites.
Using Tor browser, and special search engines, we get into the dark web area of the Internet
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We all have been using the internet for years, but most of us are still unaware of the entire internet. The internet contains a lot of hidden content that is not visible to common users.
When using the internet for our daily routine tasks, we surf the surface web – the uppermost part of the cyber iceberg. In this article, we are focusing on the bottom layer of this iceberg. This layer is known as the dark web or darknet.
It is also known as the hidden web. This area contains around 96% of the whole internet. It is important to understand that this area cannot be accessed directly and by everyone.
It requires different techniques and security methods that lead us to enter into the dark web.
We will be using the Kali Linux operating system. In addition to that, we will use the Tor browser and multiple search engines such as torch, haystack, OnionLinks, etc.
Using all this combined, we will accomplish our task of accessing the dark web forums.
Table of Contents
Dark Web Forums (DWF) is a platform that leads to the hidden contents of the dark web. Dark Web Forums are not an old thing in the cybercriminal history of the English language. Neither is it something exceptional.
Since the beginning of English language cybercriminal history, many forums came into being, stayed for some time, and eventually disappeared.
As I said above that Dark web forums are not an old thing. Therefore it does not have a very high level of content and activity over them till now.
Different companies have been working in this domain to find the exact statistics about the total number of dark web forums and sites.
Threat intelligence company researchers found a total of 55828 onion sites. All these are accessible through the Tor browser.
Interestingly, out of these 55282 sites, only 8416 sites are working. Still, researchers are not sure that how many of these sites are being used for illegal purposes.
We know there are [roughly] 100 live onion sites that are part of the active criminal underground as either high-tier criminal forums, lower-tier but still explicitly criminal forums, or dark web markets where illegal goods are sold. We also know that there are some benign onion sites, like the onion mirror of the New York Times website.
Garth Griffin, Recorded Future’s director of data science
Out of all these sites, many have been penetrated by different law enforcement agencies worldwide.
According to the data set of Recorded Future, the users visiting the Hidden Wiki links are just 3 clicks away from 82% of the dark web.
It is an interesting point to know that most active dark websites are never available all the time. Even the most popular sites are available only between 60% to 90% of the time.
NOTE: All the “.onion” sites are only accessible using the Tor browser because they are all part of the deep/dark web. None of these sites are available on the surface web. Moreover, different forums have been discussed along with their exploration. Different types of content have been shown, which are present on these forums.
Accessing the dark web forums requires special tools, i.e., Tor browser and special (illegal) search engines such as torch, haystack, OnionLinks, onEvil, giburu, the hidden wiki, Ahmia, etc.
The demonstration of using the Tor browser and all these search engines has been demonstrated in the previous research article.
In this section, we will be discussing the top-ranked dark web forums. Following is the description of each of them.
One of the biggest forums on DarkNet is Facebook’s onion domain. It is a social media network for the people on deep web.
Facebook claims not to record any information associated with these users for privacy purposes.
The Hidden wiki is one of the most famous forums of the dark web. Here you will find links to all kinds of creepy and illegal websites ranging from drug sites to government leaked documents.
You can even find the real wiki leaks documents over here. The problem with this forum is that it changes its link every 2 or 3 days to maintain its anonymity.
Kickass torrent is available on the main web, but some of the countries have banned it
So we can access it using its deep web domain, which is available for everyone, and there is no problem with government tracking and taking action against you.
Another famous dark web forum is the dread forum. It is also an English forum, launched back in February 2018.
Dread forum is also known as Reddit-style forum. This platform is based on The Onion Routing (Tor). Using the dread forums, you can comment, post or share anything without fearing censorship.
According to the statistics taken in the mid of 2018, dread has around 15000 active members. Dread forums focus on drug vendors, hot trends, and new marketplaces.
According to the dread forum admin, u/Hugbunter/, dread forum does not intend to allow paid membership at any level. This forum has more than 500 posts and 700 sub dreads daily.
Dread forums provide detailed guidelines to produce illegal drugs, announce marketplace closures and sell stolen data.
It is thought that the dread forum arose as a result of banning several subreddits by Reddit. Those subreddits are related to market discussions. This converted a large audience towards the dread forums, and the users started to grow rapidly.
Nulled is another forum with a lot of controversial content. Even though, it is reachable without special browser, we count it as Dark Web one because of the content presented there. It is also an English language forum created in 2015. Nulled has 3.6 million active members. It emphasizes hacking and leaked material.
Back in 2016, a database of Nulled was leaked. The leaked database contained PayPal information, including email addresses, purchase records, billings and passwords. This resulted in the media’s attention towards Nulled.
Meanwhile, different Law Enforcement Agencies used this incident and tracked down different cybercriminals and hackers using this site.
Nulled is the biggest famous platform for providing illegal content, from leaked materials to money scams and penetration testing.
Crackingking is a dark web forum that provides tools and tutorials for hackers.
Moreover, it provides information about the latest data leaks and the gain access to their marketplace.
Cryptbb is one of the hackers’ favorite(English language) dark web forums. It was created in 2017.
It was a well-known forum because of its hard app policy, and the members needed to pass the interview to be accepted.
Since its creation, cryptbb has been evolving and expanding with new elements.
Free hacks forum is a Russian language dark web forum. Different hackers and cybercriminals gather their resources to enhance their knowledge.
It works like legal forum sites. Users can also access it by using the Tor browser and using it as a simple search engine. It includes the following categories:
Considering the above-mentioned list of categories of free hacks forums, we can see that it covers all types of illegal activities that can be carried out using the internet.
As said earlier, it is a Russian language forum, so it operates within Russia. It is estimated to have over 5000 active users.
All the categories as mentioned earlier on free hacks are further divided into sub-forums.
Hack town is an educational platform. It offers different resources about hacking for profit.
It tends to educate the new coming cybercriminals to develop and enhance their skills to carry out successful frauds and other cybercrimes.
Let’s trash around Dark web forums now.
Now we will access Facebook’s onion domain using the following link:
https://www.facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion/
The Hidden wiki is one of the most famous forums of the dark web. Here you will find links to all kinds of creepy and illegal websites ranging from drug sites to government leaked documents.
You can even find the real wiki leaks documents over here. The problem with this forum is that it changes its link every 2 or 3 days to maintain its anonymity.
Several dead links or fake websites claim to be The Hidden Wiki, so you have to be careful with what you are doing.
AlphaBay Market is one of dark web market from where you can hire a hit man or a hacker.
You can also find all sorts of illegal drugs and weapons which are banned from the mainstream internet.
Dark web pug's main page is given below
https://rfyb5tlhiqtiavwhikdlvb3fumxgqwtg2naanxtiqibidqlox5vispqd.onion/
https://t43fsf65omvf7grt46wlt2eo5jbj3hafyvbdb7jtr2biyre5v24pebad.onion/
Besides all this, we can find a lot more things over there.
Kickass Torrents is one of the most famous torrent sites on the planet due to piracy and pirated content in most countries.
Most people cannot afford to pay for every small thing on the internet, so they use the torrented or pirated version of the software or games.
If the main torrent site is banned, you can access the Kickass forum’s deep web link without the fear of getting tracked.
https://kickassugvgoftuk.onion/
In this section, we will practically access the Dread forums and find out what information it contains.
Using the link, we will get into the dread forums.
In the following screenshots, you can see the dreads on the Dread forum.
In this section, we will practically access the Nulled forums and find out what information it contains.
Using the link, we will get into the Nulled forums.
In this section, we will practically access the Cryptbb forums and find out what information it contains.
Following is the link to access the Cryptbb forums:https://cryptbbtg65gibadeeo2awe3j7s6evg7eklserehqr4w4e2bis5tebid.onion/
All the content on CryptBB is protected and requires authentication for access. It does not allow guest users to access any kind of information.
Following is the link to access the Hacktown forums: https://hacktownpagdenbb.onion
Using this link, we will get into the Hacktown forums.
No further detail about Hacktown forums is available.
The dark web forums discussed and demonstrated in this article are not all. These are just a few most famous forums. The exact number of forums is yet unknown.
Although we can say that all dark web forums provide a similar type of illegal and hidden information, all the forums can be accessed using the Tor browser.
In the future, this domain is expected to expand further. Different onion sites are emerging in the field. Besides this, even the pre-existing onion sites are upgrading to the new versions.
Security researchers are constantly working on these platforms to dig out as much information as possible.
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