Dread is a new community service for Dark Net users, built from scratch without any frameworks by /u/hugbunter, the site was intended as a Dark Net Market security discussion and resource for web masters or researchers.

The administrator of Dread opened the forum back up for users after adding measures to prevent bots, automated spam, and vote manipulation on comments and posts. The forum will receive another update at some point within the next week that will bring additional features and stability to the platform, HugBunter said.

More than a week after Dread went down for maintenance, HugBunter’s deadman switch was triggered, indicating that the owner of the largest darkweb forum no longer had control over the forum or his own equipment. His staff, in a message on the Dread homepage, said to assume the worst.

Dread, the top darkweb forum, has been offline for days, leaving users wondering about the future of the site and the status of the forum’s admin. After several days of silence, the admin—HugBunter—added a notice to the Dread landing page about the downtime and a number of updates to the platform.

Dread, the darkweb discussion platform that serves as a centralized point of contact for users of other darkweb markets and forums, is currently down due to “a harsh DoS attack,” the creator said in a message on Reddit.

Update: Online - Dread has been down for several hours. HugBunter posted a status update on the DreadAlert subreddit about the downtime and about the Nightmare Market exit scam. He announced that he had been working on a solution and planned to have Dread back online in a number of hours.

A PSA from HugBunter regarding current attacks against Dread, upcoming fixes, and the status of a Dread mirror if needed.

In a post on the /r/DreadAlert subreddit, HugBunter announced that users could access Dread once again after several days of downtime. The developer explained that his protections had successfully dampened the impact of the ongoing attacks against his server.