Dread is a popular community hub which has been described as a "
Reddit-style forum" and the successor of the seized
DeepDotWeb for discussion around market law enforcement activity and
scams.[4][5] It came to prominence in 2018 after Reddit banned several darknet market discussion communities, rapidly reaching 12,000 registered users within three months of being launched, and 14,683 users by June 2018.[6] In September 2019, HugBunter's
dead man's switch was triggered,[7] accompanied by a weeks-long absence, signifying the temporary loss of control over the site. The site would be reinstated in November,[8] with a revamped user interface, and remains active as of September 2022. It became known that the cause of the outage was a server failure, according to HugBunter,[8] despite rumors[by whom?] concerning a potential compromising from a third party or law-enforcement authority.
Activities
In May 2019 a moderator of
Wall Street Market posted its hidden IP address to Dread, potentially leading to its
exit scam and seizure shortly after.[9][10][11] Stolen data is sometimes sold via Dread.[12] The site features in-depth guides around manufacture of illegal drugs.[13] The shutdown of
Dream Market was announced on Dread in March 2019.[14] Major
denial-of-service attacks have been launched against Dread and other markets exploiting a vulnerability in the
Tor protocol.[15]