Timeline

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--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 Hack Forums 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 Hack Forums celebrates it's 4th anniversary of operation.

• 04--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 ForumsNet/status/40942951920185344 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 ForumsNet/status/27462312101158913 created for permanently banned members not welcomed back to Hack Forums.

• 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.==2010==

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

• 12-11-10 (?) Hack Forums 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 Hack Forums 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.

• 09-10-10 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.

• 09-02-10 Hack Forums 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 ForumsNet/status/18325130374 added.

• 07-08-10 The Ub3r Security Word feature, meant to combat stolen accounts, is ForumsNet/status/18065018346 added.

• 07-06-10 The E-Whoring subforum is ForumsNet/status/17890112719 added under the Hacking tab. Ub3r members ForumsNet/status/18065018346 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 ForumsNet/status/17071873896 added under the Gaming tab.

• 06-17-10 through 06-21-10: ForumsNet/status/16726640464 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 ForumsNet/status/16192507264 4,000,000 posts are achieved on Hack Forums.

• 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 ForumsNet/status/14318115934 created. Many major non-ISP datacenters are blocked, including proxies and VPNs.

• 05-14-10: The post character minimum is ForumsNet/status/13959365025 increased from 20 to 25. Normal members can only post in The Lounge 10 times in a 24 hour period.

• 05-11-10 Hack Forums 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.

• 04-14-10 Graphic Masters, led by iBruteforce and Notorious Mental,is recruiting, ahead of a relaunch of the group.

• 04-12-10 Etheryte is appointed as a staff member. Valiant is appointed as moderator of the White Hat Help section.

• 04-11-10 An accidental database overwrite leads to a rollback of the site by nine hours. Posts, PMs and data are lost.

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

• 04-10-10 The Ub3r feature to view warnings, not just points, is released. All promised Ub3r abilities are now activated.

• 04-06-10 The Alliance leadership now comprises Skill (founder), Paradoxum, Vorfin, Saged and Notorious Mental.

• 04-06-10 To much delight, Crew Recruitment is reopened, although no new official groups will be created.

• 04-06-10 Yin is appointed moderator of Ebook Bazaar; policies and Reviewer applications to be supervised with Skill.

• 04-06-10 Omniscient 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.

• 04-05-10 The Support Feather award is available for a limited time to members who contribute to Omniscient's Support Forums.

• 04-05-10 Skill is made a staff member.

• 04-05-10 Malvager Radio, a project initiated and hosted by iintens, is launched, with iintens and Psycho as DJ's.

• 04-01-10 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.

• 03-30-10 Guru joins Hack Forums as a system administrator.

• 03-28-10 "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."

• 03-23-10 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.

• 02-27-10 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.

• 02-26-10 Omniscient proposes a project to reclaim the meaning of 'hacker' by sending a Hack Forums message to the public.

• 02-26-10 The sale is postponed and Omniscient cites 'member sentiment' as one reason for his decision.

• 02-24-10 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.

• 02-19-10 After a week of sustained DDoS attacks, the Netherlands is IP blocked.

• 02-18-10 Following the closure of SCUC, Omniscient clarifies site policies concerning the Marketplace.]

• 02-17-10 The Crews and Clans section is closed.

• 02-09-10 Yin is made a staff member.

• 02-02-10 The crackdown in the popular public space, The Lounge, results in mass bans with survivors left reeling. Rules are instituted and fierce debate ensues.

• 02-02-10 Kewlhotrod solicits applications for project Hack Forums Radio.

• 02-01-10 The Reviewers become an official group. Its leaders are Omniscient, Prettykitty, Rusty_v™ and Skill.

• 01-12-10 Periodical MySQL downtime since 12-15-09 are resolved by innodb and full-text alterations.

2009

• 12-31-09 Scammer Cleanup Crew (SCUC) led by Notorious Mentalbecomes official. Despite its usefulness, mixed reviews result in the crew being closed in early 2010.+ 2009

• 12-21-09 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.

• 12-16-09 Two days to a year from his registration date, iBruteforce has risen through the ranks to become a Hack Forums administrator alongside Omniscient.

• 12-16-09 Conspiracy launches the Signature of the Week competition in Graphics.]

• 12-13-09 After his crypter is sold without authorisation on Hack Forums, 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.

• 11-24-09 Saged is made a staff member.

• 11--09 N3w_2_H@Ck1n™ is made a staff member.

• 11-18-09 MagicSpeed™ has become synonymous with the Lounge as a humourist whose influence exasperates Omniscient.

• 10-17-09 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.

• 10-15-09 Vorfin bravely opens a scam report against staff member Vaqxine, over unfulfilled promises of a keylogger.

• 10-01-09 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.

• 09-29-09 ForumsNet/status/4484432452 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.

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

• 09-25-09 The Rated R Superstar is made a staff member.

• 09-22-09 Hack Forums popularity ranking supersedes Milw0rm.

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

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

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

• 08-04-09 Vaqxine is made a staff member.

• 08-01-09 One million posts on Hack Forums. A celebratory contest with Z$10,000 cash prize is won by Valiant.

• 07-22-09 The Alliance and D.S. Inc. are approved by Omniscient and granted private subforums each.

• 07--09 Forumsnet The official Hack Forums twitter begins.

• 07-15-09 A troll by the handle n3td3v impersonates the Anti-Sec movement to post threats against Hack Forums and Milw0rm. The real Anti-Sec movement had previously claimed credit for hacking blackhat-forums.com.

• 07-15-09 Hack Forums is temporarily restored after being down for several days following a DDoS attack. Many country IPs are blocked to mitigate the attack.

• 07-05-09 D.S. Inc begins recruiting members.

• 07-02-09 Ghost Exodus is arrested for hacking into a hospital's air-conditioning system after posting up screensavers and videos of his work.

• 06-13-09 iBruteforce is made a staff member.

• 06-01-09 Tank's Typing Services is opened. It remains the only typing service and one of the longest-running threads in Service Offerings.

• 05-23-09 A strong DDoS attack leads Omniscient to geoblock most regions of the world.

• 04-01-09 The FBI shuts down the site. Omniscient gleefully reveals it to be an April Fool's prank.

• 02-27-09 VipVince is made a staff member.

• 02-24-09 Psinetic is removed from staff and Omniscient cites his incompatibility with preferred moderator behaviour.

• 02-04-09 Lounge post count is disabled and Omniscient singles out posts by MagicSpeed™ as the decisive factor.

2008

• 12-30-08 irc.malvager.com replaces the DNS for irc.9unkz0r.com.+ 2008

• 12-14-08 Forumsnet-was-rooted-and-9unkz0r.html 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.

• 11-07-08 The Hack Masta admits to a DDoS attack towards Hack Forums and stealing ICY's account, after his site h4cky0u.org is taken down in an attack he suspects HF of.

• 11-06-08 InfamousBytes, Knight120891, Psinetic and Simon Parker are appointed as staff members.

• 10-25-08 Discussions continue over the setup of a new IRC or Ventrilo server, when 9unkz0r goes down again.

• 10-19-08 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 Hack Forums.

• 09-12-08 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.

• 08-26-08 RaseiLord is as a staff member.

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

• 08-10-08 Starwiz, a Hack Forums 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, 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."

• 06-27-08 bsdpunk and EdgeX- set up an IRC network at irc.9unkz0r.com.

• 06-XX-08 MulCiber penetrates the Hack Forums server by uploading the self-coded MulCiShell to a vulnerable site.

• c. 06-06-08 Subscriber accounts are created.

• c. 06-03-08 bsdpunk is appointed as a staff member.

• c. 04-27-08 sangederomin is appointed as a staff member.

• c. 04-10-08 Crow is appointed as a staff member.

• c. 04-09-08 'File Sharing, Cracks, Warez, and Torrents' section is renamed as 'Freaky Files For Fun.'

• c. 04-02-08 A sidebar highlighting "Latest Threads" is added to the forum homepage.

• c. 02-16-08 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. 01-12-08 Hanzo is appointed as site administrator.

• c. 01-06-08 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. 12-11-07 Codine is appointed as a staff member.+ 2007

• c. 10-12-07 Kuroda_Shun becomes the site's first staff member.

• 05-02-07 sTrEtCh posts the first ever question for Hack Forums, and of most beginner hackers.

• 05-02-07 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.

References

• Hack Forums Wikidot
• HF Past to Present: A HF Timeline (Last Update: 01/03/14)