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Understanding Illicit Ecosystems: XSS and the Current State of the Russian-Speaking Underground
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Understanding Illicit Ecosystems: XSS and the Current State of the Russian-Speaking Underground
In this post, we explore XSS’ shift from a unified forum to a scattered community spread across several competing factions.
Table Of ContentsWhat is XSS?
For more than two decades, XSS was the gathering ground for the Russian-speaking cybercriminal underground. Evolving from its former name, DaMaGeLaB, XSS evolved from a mid-tier message board into a top-tier hacking forum.
XSS is home to vendors of various crime types, including loaders, phishing, scamming, carding, malware development, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) bots, and related services. It also facilitates the trade of illicit goods and services, while simultaneously serving as a networking and recruitment hub for threat actors.
XSS forum content falls within the following main sections:
- “Underground”: Includes most noncommercial content, such as sharing information on malware, vulnerabilities, and exploits, phishing, fraud, open source intelligence, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
- “Programming, Development”: Includes posts and articles about programming languages and administration.
- “Library”: Includes news articles, databases, and discussions around software and tools. Users also post about vulnerabilities and exploits.
- “Business Decisions”: Users discuss different investments, the sale of digital goods, trading, start-ups of fraudulent businesses, and news about cryptocurrencies.
- “Lounge Zone, Resting”: Content involves lifestyle discussions, hobbies, and cybercriminal community rumors and scandals.
- “Trading Platform”: Users sell and look to buy network access, malware, counterfeit documents, and advertise their services. This is where users hire and look for work or partners.
- “People’s Court”: Used for complaints and arbitration and contains lists of phishing forums and scammers.
- “Ours”: Contains information about the XSS project, discussions on issues, suggestions, and initiatives for forum improvement.
- “Private: Underground”: Closed section for only forum members.
XSS Disruption: July 2025 Takedown
On July 23, 2025, law enforcement organizations reportedly seized XSS as part of a multinational operation with Ukrainian authorities, French police, and Europol. Alongside the domain seizure, French authorities reported the arrest of XSS’s longtime administrator in Ukraine.
This arrest triggered an immediate chain reaction that has had lasting effects on the Russian-speaking underground—with the XSS ecosystem splintering into several competing factions.
The Current State of the Russian-Speaking Underground
While the original XSS architecture was severely disrupted, the surrounding Russian-speaking cybercriminal ecosystem remains intensely active. However, instead of a centralized hub, the XSS ecosystem is spread out through competing environments that emerged directly from the fallout of the takedown.
DamageLib
Launched by the legacy moderators of XSS, DamageLib represents a structural pivot away from standard illicit forums. Concluding that the old XSS site was compromised by law enforcement, the moderators launched a new model that completely abandons commerce—shutting down all buying, selling, and auctions entirely—-to eliminate user tracking and surveillance. Instead, it focuses strictly on technical materials and tutorials.
Rehub
Recognizing that displaced cybercriminals still required a commercial venue to trade, a former XSS moderator launched Rehub quickly after the emergence of DamageLib. Rehub immediately integrated a commercial platform, successfully recruiting prominent threat actors into its moderation team to establish underground credibility.
The forum is still in its development stage, with its content being populated, and an active member base being built.
XSS[.pro]
In early August 2025, an unknown entity launched an alleged resurrection of the forum on a new domain [.pro], utilizing old backups that preserved legacy user data, threads, and forum deposits. However, this new version has been met with significant distrust from Exploit and DamageLib, believing the [.pro] domain to be a honeypot controlled by law enforcement.
XSSF Forum
Started by a pro-Russian Telegram hacking group, this community actively targets EU and Ukrainian digital infrastructure. According to user discussions on DamageLib, this forum is not related to XSS. In addition, Flashpoint analysts note that targeting Ukrainian infrastructure directly contradicts its original community rules. The authenticity of this forum and its ownership has not been verified.
Monitor a Fractured Underground Using Flashpoint
While law enforcement achieved a significant victory over XSS, they did not eliminate the Russian-speaking cybercriminal underground. Instead, they broke the foundational trust mechanics that had kept it centralized for twenty years.
This has left the Russian-speaking underground in a deeply fractured state that is still intensely active and highly adaptive. For defenders and analysts, this threat has not diminished—it has diversified. Tracking this ecosystem no longer means watching a single centralized community, but rather actively mapping out the live migrations, shifting rules, and behavioral patterns across these splintered groups.
Request a demo to learn how Flashpoint helps security teams aggregate intelligence from these scattered factions into a single source of truth, empowering your organization to proactively monitor and intercept emerging threats.
Request a demo today.
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