HF History

2011

• 08-13-11 Richie and T3h Hacker are promoted to probational staff member positions.

• 08-12-11 The forums are upgraded to MyBB 1.6.4. Bugs and errors are rampant.

• 08-11-11 Members are no longer allowed to have goals in their signatures.

• 08-10-11 Omniscient enables post count for all forums.

• 07-23-11 Hуѕтєяιa X™ is added as the forum moderator to the Music forum.

• 07-17-11 The group Eminence is formed and recruitment opens.

• 07-05-11 Movie torrents and illegal downloads are banned on HF.

• 07-04-11 Repfuck complaining is now banned; doing so gets you a one month ban.

• 07-01-11 Groups can no longer be used to coordinate gang-repping on other members.

• 06-29-11 Omniscient issues a forum wide password reset to secure accounts after LulzSec decrypts the HF password database from February.

• 06-27-11 The Gamer's Crew and Philiker groups are deleted due to gang repping and/or inactivity.

• 06-22-11 Reverence and The Informers, 2 new official groups, are founded by Astonish is NJ and _char respectively.

• 06-20-11 Several of Omni's websites are hacked and defaced. Omni makes an announcement to anyone attempting to hack his sites in the future.

• 06-13-11 DeepWeb discussion is added to the Blackhat help doc and banned from HF. The portal.php feature of HF is deleted, due to lack of member & staff usage and usefulness.

• 06-07-11 Omni removes all current stickies and announces that all future ones will be decided by him alone. The Sticky Man for amazing threads is also created.

• 06-06-11 GoodWill Monday is reinstated.

• 05-27-11 Omni announces the formation of the Wiki Team and asks for member involvement. Forum games such as "post until staff posts" are banned.

• 05-26-11 Omni increases the prices for member upgrades $2. Members can use a coupon to save the $2 for one week.

• 05-19-11 Apple products are banned on HF.

• 05-18-11 (?) The Reputation Abuse Support and Gamertag forums are created and the Suggestions and Ideas forum is reopened. Post count for the Rules, Announcements and Feedback, Suggestions and Ideas & Member Contests forums are disabled and a post recount is initiated. The new requirements for HF L33t are 25 posts and 1 week of membership.

• 05-09-11 HackForums experiences an accidental 24 hour rollback of posts, PMs and reputation due to a INNODB ibdata file corruption. Omni announces that the site had been shelled in February and member details may

• 05-04-11 Guru is demoted from his administrator position. All Omni had to say about it was "he is no longer assisting me."

• 05-02-11 AsSaSs@iN is promoted to staff member position.

• 04-27-11 phir3 nuk3r is demoted from staff and repfucked. cobija is promoted to replace him.

• 04-21-11 HackForums celebrates it's 4th anniversary of operation.

• 04-20-11 Saged announces his resignation from staff.

• 04-01-11 The Lofo Prilas April Fool's Day joke, involving members receiving notifications of being one of three select members to join the staff team by filling out a questionairre. Omni revealed it all to be a prank and revealed the answers to everyone's questions.

• 03-14-11 Signatures are now subject to a 200 px overflow limit.

• 02-24-11 The Free Services and Giveaways forum is created under Marketplace Discussions.

• 02-11-11 Discussion of Runescape on HF is banned. Phire Nuk3r is reinstated to his staff member position.

• 01-23-11 The Elite posts the 1 millionth thread on HF. Congratulations!

• 01-18-11 The Dead group is created for permanently banned members not welcomed back to HackForums.

• 01-14-11 Omniscient upgrades HF's MySQL server to 5.5

• 01-12-11 Vorfin is promoted to staff and phir3 nuk3r is demoted from his position.

2010

• 12-23-10 The Member of the Month contest is reinstated by the administrator Crow.

• 12-22-10 Unexpected delays in upgrading result in HF being offline

• 12-21-10 HF is upgraded from the 1.4x branch of myBB to the new 1.6.1 version

• 12-18-10 Vacation bans for ub3r members are instated, allowing ub3r members to take a break from HF for personal reasons or for their own reasons.

• 12-20-10 Product keys and software cracks are no longer allowed on HF.

• 12-11-10 (?) HackForums finally receives a new server, reducing downtime and increasing speed tenfold.

• 12-04-10 (?) phire nuk3r is promoted to staff member.

• 11-25-10 N3w_2_H@Ck1n™ steps down from his staff position.

• 11-23-10 The Currency Exchange forum is added to HF

• 11-11-10 Saged is reinstated to his staff member position. The Negative Reputation Log is made visible to ub3r members.

• 11-09-10 Soldier of Fortune is removed from staff.

• 10-31-10 (?) Kewlhotrod and VipVince are demoted from their staff member positions for the second time.

• 10-23-10 (?) Kewlhotrod and VipVince are reinstated to their staff member positions.

• 10-22-10 Dispute over Solidify's moderator position of the Lounge starts, ending with the eventual ban of his account and removal of his moderator position.

• 10-07-10 (?) Kutmustakurt is promoted to staff member after his demotion several weeks prior.

• 10-04-10 The YouTube award, Fish Err Man award, Cat Lover award and Dog Lover award are added to the forum. Members can get the YouTube award by posting a funny or interesting video on the forum or PMing the URL to Omniscient.

• 10-01-10 iBruteforce steps down from his administrator position; Crow is promoted to administrator position to manage stolen accounts.

• 09-26-10 HackForums reaches 6,000,000 posts on all it's forums.

• 09-19-10 Omniscient grants his annual amnesty for banned members, giving them a second chance. Members banned for scamming were repfucked, perma banned or left a negative reputation.

• c. week of 09-15-10 through 09-22-10: Kr4z1 was promoted to staff member; Kutmuskaturt, VipVince, Kewlhotrod, Yin and Hanzo are demoted from their specific staff positions.

• 09-10-2010 Religious and political expression is banned on HF to avoid flaming and rep abuse. Failure to adhere to this rule will earn you a Profile Violation.

• 09-02-2010 HackForums has been officially granted the title of the most popular MyBB forum.

• c. week of 08-01-10 through 08-07-10: The Premium Sellers Marketplace and Secondary Seller's Marketplace are created after they are split from the original Marketplace.

• 07-27-10 An Android Development section is added as a subforum of the Java Language, JVM, and the JRE forum

• 07-17-10 Spyeye is added to the list of banned software as Omniscient says it is as bad as Zeus.

• 07-11-10 The VPN Hosting and Services forum and Website Showcase and Reviews forum is created and the policies of the section are explained. The infamous Home icon easter egg is added. 

• 07-08-10 The Ub3r Security Word feature, meant to combat stolen accounts, is added.

• 07-06-10 The E-Whoring subforum is added under the Hacking tab. Ub3r members can now see what users rated a specific thread with what rating.

• 07-05-10 (?) The member AsSaSs@iN steps down from his staff member position.

• 06-26-10 The Call of Duty and Halo forums are added under the Gaming tab.

• 06-17-10 through 06-21-10: Several DDOS attacks on HF are attempted and quelled by Omniscient.

• 06-17-10 Omniscient imposes a ban on donation begging, which comes with it's own 10% 1 month warning.

• 06-15-10 The member Kurdistan infects countless HF members with the Kurdistan Crypter. Members are advised to watch what they download from upgraded members and run a full HJT Checkup if they installed the crypter.

• 06-14-10 4,000,000 posts are achieved on HackForums.

• 06-12-10 The Marketplace Discussions, Virtual Machines and Cybergate forums are added.

• 06-11-10 Blackhat policies are reclassified and explained. Discussion of Zeus is banned, and any discussion of BH activity will warrant a ban. Members are encouraged to join an all blackhat forum (owned by the member who originally wished to purchase HF.)

• 06-07-10 Goodwill Monday is official founded on the first Monday of every June. Members are asked to give 5 positive reputations to members and not give any negative reputation. Xch4ng3 and Rusty_v are promoted to staff members.

• c. week of 05-30-10 through 06-06-10: Ŀucien Lachance is made moderator of the Science, Religion, and Politics forum. The LUA Coding forum is created.

• c. week of 05-23-10 through 05-30-10: Braco22 is appointed moderator of the recently created forum, Video Editing. The Batch coding forum was moved from the Hacking tab to the Coding tab, as suggested by Xypher.

• 05-29-10 The member mothered is accused of being a bot, with Omni coming to his defense and confirming otherwise.

• c. week of 05-16-10 through 05-23-10: -([-S7N-])- is promoted to a staff member.

• 05-21-10 Member details such as AIM, MSN and Skype are removed from member profiles to avoid spamming, freezing and abuse.

• 05-19-10 The Graphics tab is created. Many major non-ISP datacenters are blocked, including proxies and VPNs.

• 05-14-10: The post character minimum is increased from 20 to 25. Normal members can only post in The Lounge 10 times in a 24 hour period.

• 05-11-10 HackForums gets it's 4th server, a donated server at that.

• 05-06-10 Omniscient discusses adding a Mentor usergroup, similar to staff but who moderate specific sections versus the entire forum.

• 05-09-10 The PHP forum is added under the Coding tab.

• 05-02-10 The member GoS AnthonY to scamming 10 members while trying to prove his innocence. His account is put into the dead group shortly after and his thread is closed.

• 04-14-2010 Graphic Masters, led by iBruteforce and Notorious Mental, is recruiting, ahead of a relaunch of the group.

• 04-12-2010 Etheryte is appointed as supermoderator. Valiant is appointed as moderator of the White Hat Help section.

• 04-11-2010 An accidental database overwrite leads to a rollback of the site by nine hours. Posts, PMs and data are lost.

• 04-10-2010 As a security measure in response to stolen Ub3r accounts, a general password lockdown is issued.

• 04-10-2010 The Uber feature to view warnings, not just points, is released. All promised Uber abilities are now activated.

• 04-06-2010 The Alliance leadership now comprises Skill (founder), Paradoxum, Vorfin, Saged and Notorious Mental.

• 04-06-2010 To much delight, Crew Recruitment is reopened, although no new official groups will be created.

• 04-06-2010 Yin is appointed moderator of Ebook Bazaar; policies and Reviewer applications to be supervised with Skill.

• 04-06-2010 Omnicient clarifies some rules. Bannable offences are the use of multiple accounts, the selling of Runescape accounts and anything related to VCC. Unacceptable content is the advertising of competing forums.

• 04-05-2010 The Support Feather award is available for a limited time to members who contribute to Omniscient's Support Forums.

• 04-05-2010 Skill is appointed as supermoderator.

• 04-05-2010 Malvager Radio, a project initiated and hosted by iintens, is launched, with iintens and Psycho as DJ's.

• 04-01-2010 An elaborate April Fool's joke involves even staff. Members' signatures are replaced by the mysterious mark of ZZoS, which amuses some into wearing it as their actual signature. ZZoS is also added to the contact form for legitimacy. ZZoS goes offline from the activity.

• 03-30-2010 Guru joins HackForums as a system administrator.

• 03-28-2010 "Due to complaints from Jagex I have closed the section. Unfortunately it seems that people have actually refused to discuss this popular online game but instead have gone off topic to discuss stealing accounts. Thus the section is permanently closed."

• 03-23-2010 Omniscient introduces the "Rep Fuck" button for staff. It is intended as a deterrant to reputation abuse, for members who solicit reputation points, or use it to flame others, or use it to manipulate marketplace trust.

• 02-27-2010 The moderator hacker22 goes rogue, bans other moderators and deletes 30,000 posts. Omniscient bans and publicly ridicules him, after easily restoring most content from a server backup.

• 02-26-2010 Omniscient proposes a project to reclaim the meaning of 'hacker' by sending a HackForums message to the public.

• 02-26-2010 The sale is postponed and Omniscient cites 'member sentiment' as one reason for his decision.

• 02-24-2010 The End of an Era is proclaimed, as ownership prepares to change hands. A mixed outpouring of appreciation, unhappiness, fear and confusion follows as the community comes to terms with the news.

• 02-19-2010 After a week of sustained DDoS attacks, the Netherlands is IP blocked.

• 02-18-2010 Following the closure of SCUC, Omniscient clarifies site policies concerning the Marketplace.

• 02-17-2010 The Crews and Clans section is closed.

• 02-09-2010 Yin is appointed as supermoderator.

• 02-02-2010 The crackdown in the popular public space, The Lounge, results in mass bans with survivors left reeling. Rules are instituted and fierce debate ensues.

• 02-02-2010 Kewlhotrod solicits applications for project HackForums Radio.

• 02-01-2010 The Reviewers become an official group. Its leaders are Omniscient, Prettykitty, Rusty_v™ and Skill.

• 01-12-2010 Periodical MySQL downtime since 12-15-2009 are resolved by innodb and full-text alterations.

2009

• 12-31-2009 Scammer Cleanup Crew (SCUC) led by Notorious Mental becomes official. Despite its usefulness, mixed reviews result in the crew being closed in early 2010.

• 12-21-2009 Just in time for Christmas, the Ub3r usergroup is released to an eager forum community. A much-debated feature is the ability to give -3 as well as +3 reputation points.

• 12-16-2009 Two days to a year from his registration date, iBruteforce has risen through the ranks to become a HackForums administrator alongside Omniscient.

• 12-16-2009 Conspiracy launches the Signature of the Week competition in Graphics.

• 12-13-2009 After his crypter is sold without authorisation on HackForums, coder BUNNN designs USG 0.6 and Fly Crypter v2.2 to block HF access from the hosts file. He claims to have removed the block for Fly Crypter v2.3.

• 11-24-2009 Saged is appointed as supermoderator.

• 11-20-2009 N3w_2_H@Ck1n™ is appointed as supermoderator.

• 11-18-2009 MagicSpeed™ has become synonymous with the Lounge as a humourist whose influence exasperates Omniscient.

• 10-17-2009 Fallout over Vaqxine's scam report causes members to turn to other staff for answers. Meanwhile, Vaqxine is demoted and his account is placed on Limited status.

• 10-15-2009 Vorfin bravely opens a scam report against supermoderator Vaqxine, over unfulfilled promises of a keylogger.

• 10-01-2009 The forum is up again and sold within the month under private arrangements. Subsequently, phishing is banned from mention, owing to its entirely black-hat implications.

• 09-29-2009 Omniscient announces: "HackForums.net is done. I am closing the site and moving on." The news is greeted with dismay and disbelief by supporters and detractors.

• 09-27-2009 HackForums is defaced by T-T34M. The server is shut off to prevent damage and Omniscient receives offers to buy the site.

• 09-25-2009 The Rated R Superstar is appointed as supermoderator.

• 09-22-2009 HackForums popularity ranking supersedes Milw0rm.

• 09-19-2009 Moderator applications are invited and the members discuss what is required to earn Omniscient's trust.

• 09-08-2009 The HackForums IRC channel is hosted at irc://irc.hackforums.net/hackforums. It is setup, maintained and run by the Malvager team comprising Fallen and bsdpunk.

• 09-01-2009 A dedicated image server is set up.

• 08-04-2009 Vaqxine is appointed as supermoderator.

• 08-01-2009 One million posts on HackForums. A celebratory contest with Z$10,000 cash prize is won by Valiant.

• 07-22-2009 The Alliance and D.S. Inc. are approved by Omniscient and granted private subforums each.

• 07-20-2009 The official HackForums twitter begins.

• 07-15-2009 A troll by the handle n3td3v impersonates the Anti-Sec movement to post threats against HackForums and Milw0rm. The real Anti-Sec movement had previously claimed credit for hacking blackhat-forums.com.

• 07-15-2009 HackForums is temporarily restored after being down for several days following a DDoS attack. Many country IPs are blocked to mitigate the attack.

• 07-05-2009 D.S. Inc begin recruiting members.

• 07-02-2009 Ghost Exodus is arrested for hacking into a hospital's air-conditioning system, after posting up screensavers and videos of his work.

• 06-13-2009 iBruteforce is appointed as supermoderator.

• 06-01-2009 Tank's Typing Services is opened. It remains the only typing service and one of the longest-running threads in Service Offerings.

• 05-23-2009 A strong DDoS attack leads Omniscient to geoblock most regions of the world.

• 04-01-2009 The FBI shuts down the site. Omniscient gleefully reveals it to be an April Fool's prank.

• 02-27-2009 VipVince is appointed as supermoderator.

• 02-24-2009 Psinetic is removed from staff and Omniscient cites his incompatibility with preferred moderator behaviour.

• 02-04-2009 Lounge post count is disabled and Omniscient singles out posts by MagicSpeed™ as the decisive factor.

2008

• 12-30-2008 irc.malvager.com replaces the DNS for irc.9unkz0r.com.

• 12-14-2008 Hackers from c0rrupt.org/side use "an old script with an easy exploit" to run a shell. A coinciding incident is the DDoS of irc.9unkz0r.com.

• 11-07-2008 The Hack Masta admits to a DDoS attack towards HackForums and stealing ICY's account, after his site h4cky0u.org is taken down in an attack he suspects HF of.

• 11-06-2008 InfamousBytes, Knight120891, Psinetic and Simon Parker are appointed as supermoderators.

• 10-25-2008 Discussions continue over the setup of a new IRC or Ventrilo server, when 9unkz0r goes down again.

• 10-19-2008 In retaliation for the TRH incident, Yck steals Starwiz's account. Nyx- asks the Lounge if stealing a fellow members' account is ethical. Yck defends his actions as justified by Starwiz's 'betrayal' of HackForums.

• 09-12-2008 Omniscient's yearly amnesty for banned members gives a second chance to most of those involved in the TRH incident, as well as those banned for credit card sales and advertising.

• 08-26-2008 RaseiLord is appointed as supermoderator.

• 08-25-2008 HackForums goes down not because of a DDoS, but because of traffic due to Oxy making the news with a trick for accessing restricted sites.

• 08-10-2008 Starwiz, a HackForums moderator account, is hijacked by TRH (The Rabbit Hole) members. TRH proceed to ban members and delete posts over 2 days during Omniscient's absence. For lack of a backup, several weeks' worth of posts are lost. The attack brings down irc.hackforums.net 9unkz0r. Two moderator accounts are involved: Starwiz's hijacked account and Thanatos's participation in the hijack as a TRH member. Over a year later, Thanatos refers to the incident as one where "me and 4 other guys wrecked this site."

• 06-27-2008 bsdpunk and EdgeX- set up an IRC network at irc.9unkz0r.com.

• 06-XX-2008 MulCiber penetrates the HackForums server by uploading the self-coded MulCiShell to a vulnerable site.

• c. 06-06-2008 Subscriber accounts are created.

• c. 06-03-2008 bsdpunk is appointed as supermoderator.

• c. 04-27-2008 sangederomin is appointed as supermoderator.

• c. 04-10-2008 Crow is appointed as supermoderator.

• c. 04-09-2008 'File Sharing, Cracks, Warez, and Torrents' section is renamed as 'Freaky Files For Fun.'

• c. 04-02-2008 A sidebar highlighting "Latest Threads" is added to the forum homepage.

• c. 02-16-2008 In another forum reshuffle, a fourth section 'Hacker Introductions, Feedback and Site Rules' is opened. The Hack Test is moved from The Lounge to become a board of its own. 'Buy Sell and Trade,' a marketplace board, is opened after a fortnight of discussion.

• c. 01-12-2008 Hanzo is appointed as site administrator.

• c. 01-06-2008 A forum reshuffle occurs. Off-Topic board is junked and a third section 'File Sharing, Cracks, Warez, and Torrents' is opened. The Lounge is established: "Welcome to the Hack Forums lounge where just about anything goes."

2007

• c. 12-11-2007 Codine is appointed as supermoderator.

• c. 10-12-2007 Kuroda_Shun becomes the site's first supermoderator.

• 05-02-2007 sTrEtCh posts the first ever question for HackForums, and of most beginner hackers.

• 05-02-2007 HackForums.net is launched with three rules, two sections and an assurance: "Remember we do not log IP addresses on this site at all." The forum database of Zipile & DDLteam, dating from 2006, is uploaded to the site.