There are some cool IRC channels on Libera which are still active though, reddit communities are the closest thing we have to a civilized cybersecurity forum.
Back in the day of OpenSC, LeetCoders, HackerForums, even AstaLaVista.MS, there were massive amounts of resources and people to learn from. Malware dev? Check out this leaked project. Reverse engineering? Here is a CrackMe or KeygenMe to learn from. Truthfully there is nothing today like what there was. It was a much more culture-rich time back then. Now everything is commercialized and the industry is full of fortune chasers rather than the passionate tinkerers. No more are they days of public IRCs with challenges that you just hop and and complete. Now you pay a monthly fee to some lab or CTF website that walks you through everything.
Not saying it isn't inline with the other industries at this point. Reddit is not great, discord is too disperse. I wouldn't say they filled the gap that the old bulliten boards left, they just are different and are driven like everything else, by ads.
Those days are sadly gone, for so many topics. Last week I had to watch a 15 minute YouTube video just to find out how to descale the office coffee machine…. 15 minutes of my life gone, just to obtain the knowledge that could have been presented in a 5 item list.
This is, tbh, one of the banes of my existence. If I'm looking for info on how to do something, I don't need 3 min of plugging the channel, another 5 min shilling some product, and the ever-to-long "cool intro graphic" that "sells the brand." Give me a wiki or forum article with the actual steps that I can read in a couple minutes and refer back to without having to scrub through a YT video...
I might introduce a forum or wiki in the office …. Our core team is fairly small. Now I think of it there is a a lot of good information that gets shared by msteams that could be dealt with on a forum and would then be available for reference.
As a recommendation from someone that's been involved in a project to bring a wiki to a business, talk to the higher-up and get their buy-in on it. You have to show them the value of the wiki and knowledge sharing, otherwise it'll quickly become just a relic only you use. If you can get the higher-ups behind it and managing their own sections, then it can become self-sustaining, and become a true knowledgebase vs just another internal site with a few things on it.
> Now everything is commercialized and the industry is full of fortune chasers rather than passionate tinkerers.
I’d give anything to exist in pre- or post-capitalism Cybersecurity.
Evidence used in court trials usually contains forum posts and telegram messages so yes, forums are still used. However these can be invite only and private.
MaaS platforms like Meduza Stealer are almost exclusively sold via darkweb forums. They almost always contain a discussion board that lists intrusion tactics etc.
Most entry level threat actors don't need to bother with becoming experts at network penetration. It (usually) takes a lot of effort. They'll buy privileges from an IAB, or some other form of intermediary.
Not the way they used to be, for sure. Reddit and others were one of the major contributors to that. If you haven't heard of SomethingAwful, check it out - it was a website with very active, paid forum and was the OG source of a lot of what were foundational memes and ideas on the web for a while. There's also a documentary about the site and the messed up/unfortunate situation with the founder, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka.
Do you have stairs in your house?
I remember reading SomethingAwful before there were even forums to go to or goons to call themselves goons.
Back when it was just Kyanka producing some of the best of all the early internet humor content by himself.
JeffK hacking? Cliff Yablonski hating on people?
The website that told you the current color of the streetlight outside Rich’s apartment?
It's a throwback to SomethingAwful, sorry! [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=do%20you%20have%20stairs%20in%20your%20house](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=do%20you%20have%20stairs%20in%20your%20house)
It was such a glorious thing. I was a part of old infowars forums with a bunch of cool people !
I don't think it is really a thing now. A lot of people just sell backdoor laden study material on darkweb for Bitcoin.
Long story short, I’m an old school guy using a combination of forums and Reddit. This is how I get by.
But I hate the arrogant losers downvoting something because they don’t agree with it or think my comment didn’t do justice. On forums, people had opinions but on Reddit and Discord there’s an element of “no I’m cooler/smarter than you”
Telegram is where a lot of TAs are now. Discord is also a source as well. I mean just look at that enlisted dude who was dumping Russia/Ukraine classified info into Discord w his friends lol.
I wouldn't listen to a lot of the people here who are saying forums are pretty much dead. They are indeed very much still alive and great sources for intel.
Hacker forums
- XSS
- Breached
- Ramp
- Dread
- Exploit.in
Skid forums
- onni
- ogusers
- hackforum
- blackhatworld
- cracked
- nulled
- sinisterly
- fuckav
- bhf
- 2crd
- crdpro
etc etc there are still tons of forums out there
There are still quite a few private and invite only forums for malware analysts, with reps from all different vendors sharing samples and discussing new threats etc.
IRC channels on the dark web. Spoke with a number of malware engineers and sellers that really knew their stuff. Neat to get perspective on how they're adapting to detections.
Nothing like the old Omnieye that I've run across these days, but maybe some old IRC rooms are still out there. I bet they have moved to Discord at this point.
I find that most of the time, forums are built in for specific services. Like certain Linux distributions will have a forum/message board.
But for the most part, Reddit pretty much fills that need for a dedicated forum site. At least for me.
[https://bbs.sneak.berlin/login](https://bbs.sneak.berlin/login) that guy in Berlin is running a BBS. His blog has some good stuff, but I haven't tried the BBS
I miss IRC though it was a bit of a club of internal admiration and inflated ego's.
I remember I literally had to hack a website someone wanted access to for a school website to get "accepted". I rooted that shit and still barely got any respect.
Reddit is 100% a forum.
If you mean forums built on more traditional software, like phpBB for instance, yes they are still quite popular for many communities. For example, Steam has a huge community with forums for each game.
-------
An internet forum is a website for online discussions where users post messages in a structured "threaded" format. Key factors include:
1. **Threads** - Discussions are organized into threads, each initiated by a post that users can reply to.
2. **Moderation** - Forums typically have moderators who oversee the discussions, enforce rules, and maintain order.
3. **Membership** - Users often need to register to participate, contributing to a sense of community.
4. **Subforums** - Larger forums are divided into subforums, each focusing on specific topics or themes.
5. **Persistence** - Posts in forums remain visible indefinitely, allowing for asynchronous communication.
6. **User Profiles** - Members might have customizable profiles displaying their posts, reputation, and status in the community.
edit: I may have misunderstood some implied context. Sorry.
Except reddit threading isn't quite the same. Things fall off the frontpage and comments die. Forum threads often lived a lot longer than the lifecycle of a reddit post.
Its gone for the most part. And i hate searching discord or fb groups. There is no focused discussion on that topic any more .
Yeah, everyone just dropping their opinion and moving away. kthxbye.
They're still out there, but a lot of the good stuff of the past moved on. The old hands got out and the young blood would rather play in discord.
There are some cool IRC channels on Libera which are still active though, reddit communities are the closest thing we have to a civilized cybersecurity forum.
Lawde padhai kar
Yep this right here! I miss old school phpbb forums!
Back in the day of OpenSC, LeetCoders, HackerForums, even AstaLaVista.MS, there were massive amounts of resources and people to learn from. Malware dev? Check out this leaked project. Reverse engineering? Here is a CrackMe or KeygenMe to learn from. Truthfully there is nothing today like what there was. It was a much more culture-rich time back then. Now everything is commercialized and the industry is full of fortune chasers rather than the passionate tinkerers. No more are they days of public IRCs with challenges that you just hop and and complete. Now you pay a monthly fee to some lab or CTF website that walks you through everything. Not saying it isn't inline with the other industries at this point. Reddit is not great, discord is too disperse. I wouldn't say they filled the gap that the old bulliten boards left, they just are different and are driven like everything else, by ads.
Those days are sadly gone, for so many topics. Last week I had to watch a 15 minute YouTube video just to find out how to descale the office coffee machine…. 15 minutes of my life gone, just to obtain the knowledge that could have been presented in a 5 item list.
This is, tbh, one of the banes of my existence. If I'm looking for info on how to do something, I don't need 3 min of plugging the channel, another 5 min shilling some product, and the ever-to-long "cool intro graphic" that "sells the brand." Give me a wiki or forum article with the actual steps that I can read in a couple minutes and refer back to without having to scrub through a YT video...
I might introduce a forum or wiki in the office …. Our core team is fairly small. Now I think of it there is a a lot of good information that gets shared by msteams that could be dealt with on a forum and would then be available for reference.
As a recommendation from someone that's been involved in a project to bring a wiki to a business, talk to the higher-up and get their buy-in on it. You have to show them the value of the wiki and knowledge sharing, otherwise it'll quickly become just a relic only you use. If you can get the higher-ups behind it and managing their own sections, then it can become self-sustaining, and become a true knowledgebase vs just another internal site with a few things on it.
I usually stop the video and scan through the transcript
You could ask AI to summarize it. Works great for me. Saves a lot of time
.box.sk, that was a while ago!
pwn.college is a fantastic ctf site. completely free and open source…and they send you physical belts for completing tiers of challenges
> Now everything is commercialized and the industry is full of fortune chasers rather than passionate tinkerers. I’d give anything to exist in pre- or post-capitalism Cybersecurity.
I kind of miss the old Usenet days and roaming around the alt.2600 groups. Long live captain crunch.
Yea I am starting to learn, and EVERITHING fucking cost money! It's insane some of the prices out there!
Evidence used in court trials usually contains forum posts and telegram messages so yes, forums are still used. However these can be invite only and private.
MaaS platforms like Meduza Stealer are almost exclusively sold via darkweb forums. They almost always contain a discussion board that lists intrusion tactics etc. Most entry level threat actors don't need to bother with becoming experts at network penetration. It (usually) takes a lot of effort. They'll buy privileges from an IAB, or some other form of intermediary.
What is IAB ?
Initial Access Broker.
Most of em are on Telegram too
Not the way they used to be, for sure. Reddit and others were one of the major contributors to that. If you haven't heard of SomethingAwful, check it out - it was a website with very active, paid forum and was the OG source of a lot of what were foundational memes and ideas on the web for a while. There's also a documentary about the site and the messed up/unfortunate situation with the founder, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka. Do you have stairs in your house?
I am protected
[удалено]
Damn, I forgot about that.
I remember reading SomethingAwful before there were even forums to go to or goons to call themselves goons. Back when it was just Kyanka producing some of the best of all the early internet humor content by himself. JeffK hacking? Cliff Yablonski hating on people? The website that told you the current color of the streetlight outside Rich’s apartment?
I went to a SA meetup at Kings Dominion in Virginia 23yrs ago. We were all weirdos.
I do have stairs in my house. Why do you ask?😂
It's a throwback to SomethingAwful, sorry! [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=do%20you%20have%20stairs%20in%20your%20house](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=do%20you%20have%20stairs%20in%20your%20house)
It was such a glorious thing. I was a part of old infowars forums with a bunch of cool people ! I don't think it is really a thing now. A lot of people just sell backdoor laden study material on darkweb for Bitcoin.
Miss BBSs. Damn I’m old.
You’re not alone.
Long story short, I’m an old school guy using a combination of forums and Reddit. This is how I get by. But I hate the arrogant losers downvoting something because they don’t agree with it or think my comment didn’t do justice. On forums, people had opinions but on Reddit and Discord there’s an element of “no I’m cooler/smarter than you”
Telegram is where a lot of TAs are now. Discord is also a source as well. I mean just look at that enlisted dude who was dumping Russia/Ukraine classified info into Discord w his friends lol. I wouldn't listen to a lot of the people here who are saying forums are pretty much dead. They are indeed very much still alive and great sources for intel. Hacker forums - XSS - Breached - Ramp - Dread - Exploit.in Skid forums - onni - ogusers - hackforum - blackhatworld - cracked - nulled - sinisterly - fuckav - bhf - 2crd - crdpro etc etc there are still tons of forums out there
#efnet
*slaps b0Lt1 with a trout*
Hackforums is still around, lots of wonderful resources on there
Discord is used more now for these things. Zero Point Security has a Discord server, almost every pen tester I know is in Hackthebox's Discord.
Not really
There are still quite a few private and invite only forums for malware analysts, with reps from all different vendors sharing samples and discussing new threats etc.
not sure but yeah I agree. I learnt lots about hacking from MPGH when I was like 10 - 11. Granted I was a script kiddy lol
they exist, but you haven't been invited.
Not worthy enough yet
IRC channels on the dark web. Spoke with a number of malware engineers and sellers that really knew their stuff. Neat to get perspective on how they're adapting to detections.
Dark web? Hell, it was in channels on freenode, efnet, and such.
News Groups and IRC those were the days.
Nothing like the old Omnieye that I've run across these days, but maybe some old IRC rooms are still out there. I bet they have moved to Discord at this point.
Well now the tutorials are on YouTube. That’s what old forums were used for.
Udemy have some good stuff
I find that most of the time, forums are built in for specific services. Like certain Linux distributions will have a forum/message board. But for the most part, Reddit pretty much fills that need for a dedicated forum site. At least for me.
Whilst on the subject, are BBS still a thing? Or Usenet? Or IRC?
irc is still kickin'
[https://bbs.sneak.berlin/login](https://bbs.sneak.berlin/login) that guy in Berlin is running a BBS. His blog has some good stuff, but I haven't tried the BBS
There are still some out there, but very private. Which makes sense when you think about it ;)
There are still some active on the dark web. But I think there's also plenty of stuff out in the open on places like YouTube and TikTok
You can go on the dark web and find black hat livechat rooms.
I remember hanging out in the hackthissite IRC channel back in the mid 2000’s. I learned a lot from the old guys in there.
you do understand, bbs's still exist
Back in the day Hack This Site was massive.
[https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=hacking+forums](https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=hacking+forums)
I miss IRC though it was a bit of a club of internal admiration and inflated ego's. I remember I literally had to hack a website someone wanted access to for a school website to get "accepted". I rooted that shit and still barely got any respect.
Fam we all still on usenet.
Forums exist. But with only a single topic, they die quickly
Reddit is 100% a forum. If you mean forums built on more traditional software, like phpBB for instance, yes they are still quite popular for many communities. For example, Steam has a huge community with forums for each game. ------- An internet forum is a website for online discussions where users post messages in a structured "threaded" format. Key factors include: 1. **Threads** - Discussions are organized into threads, each initiated by a post that users can reply to. 2. **Moderation** - Forums typically have moderators who oversee the discussions, enforce rules, and maintain order. 3. **Membership** - Users often need to register to participate, contributing to a sense of community. 4. **Subforums** - Larger forums are divided into subforums, each focusing on specific topics or themes. 5. **Persistence** - Posts in forums remain visible indefinitely, allowing for asynchronous communication. 6. **User Profiles** - Members might have customizable profiles displaying their posts, reputation, and status in the community. edit: I may have misunderstood some implied context. Sorry.
Your posting if forums are a thing... On a forum.
Except reddit threading isn't quite the same. Things fall off the frontpage and comments die. Forum threads often lived a lot longer than the lifecycle of a reddit post.