After months of downtime due to ddos attacks, the Dread darknet forum has now returned. On reddit HugBunter announced:
“Starting to write this announcement, my mind is blank. There are literally no words to describe the feeling of relief to finally bring my project back to the world for it to serve its purpose once again.”
Immediately after the announcement was posted on reddit, the site again suffered from a heavy ddos attack and was not reachable. However, 24 hours later the situation seems to have improved and currently the new dread site is available and actually loading rather quickly.
Dread was created and launched by “HugBunter” in early 2018. After a short downtime it was relaunched and its UI was completely remade to provide better security. Dread Forum is often referred to as ‘The reddit of the Darknet”. This is because when visiting the site you will immediately be reminded of reddit. the user interface is basically a clone. This means you can create not only your own threads but also your own subreddit.
Dread was likely inspired by reddit because in 2018, reddit banned all subreddits that were dedicated to darknet drug markets. But since content can never be effectively banned on the Internet, it was just a matter of time until someone created a reddit clone for exactly this purpose. And there is another important difference: Dread runs completely without Javascript so it is far superior to reddit in terms of browser security.
In the second half of 2022 Dread suffered from a permanent ddos attack that effectively shut the site down. Since then HugBunter has been working on a method to bring the site back and provided occassional updates on reddit about the progress.
Yesterday, dread finally relaunched and HugBunter also released hsi new system to mitigate ddos attacks: Daunt. Hugbunter explains it as follows:
“Daunt works by providing service operators with a method of easily submitting their mirrors in an automated manner, to be served in the directory under their service. The API endpoint for submitting the links also allows them to group links by a “Tier” name. They can then set restrictions for each of their mirror tiers, for who can access it and who cannot. They can also submit Tiers with no authentication required, or merely a captcha challenge within Daunt to access mirrors. There are no limitations to this and operators can individually curate their settings.”
You can find the full post including an extensive FAQ about Daunt on Dread which you can access under the following url:
http://dreadytofatroptsdj6io7l3xptbet6onoyno2yv7jicoxknyazubrad.onion