RaidForums was an

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

black hat hacking A Black Hat (Black Hat Hacker or Blackhat) is a computer hacker who usually violates laws or typical ethical standards. The term originates from the 1950s westerns, when bad guys typically wore black hats and good guys white hats. Black hat hacker ...

internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

active from 2015 until 2022. The website facilitated the discussion of a variety of hacking topics and was a notable distributor of various

data breaches A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, inf ...

, hacking tools, and

pornography Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

until its seizure in 2022. The website was monetized via advertisements and through a tiered membership program where members with higher tiers would receive elevated access to the forum and its contents.

History

RaidForums began in 2015 as a platform for Twitch raiders.

Domain seizure

The domain and its contents were seized by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

on April 12, 2022 after a month of

downtime The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. The unavailability is the proportion of a time-span that a system is unavailable or offline. This is usually a result of the system failing to function because of an un ...

, in collaboration with the

United States Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting U.S. political leaders, their families, and ...

, the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

, and a variety of other national and international law enforcement agencies. Raid Forums 2021 Screenshot

Administration

The website was allegedly founded by a 21-year old

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

national, Diogo Santos Coelho under the screen name "Omnipotent", who was arrested on January 31, 2022 in the United Kingdom. His arrest occurred pending several years of investigation after several of his devices were searched under warrant at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in June 2018, suggesting he was the owner and primary administrator "Omnipotent". According to hackread.com, a separate administrator under screen name "Jaw" announced the seizure officially on the forum's public

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

channel, and redirected subscribers of the channel to RaidForums' backup domain rf.to, which however went offline (and has remained offline for months) after this statement, only becoming reachable again after Diogo Santos Coelho's release on bail in August 2022.

Impact

At the time of its closure in 2022, the forum had over 530,000 registered users and was one of the most prolific and easily accessible clearnet illicit hacking forums.

References

External links