As mentioned previously, there are numerous cyber-crime sites online, but scraping their data isn't legally permissible without proper authorization. However, every technique you learn here can be easily applied to authorized environments. I must emphasize that you need explicit permission before testing anything.

You will learn how to set up your own sites locally using Docker.

The topics covered in this section include:

  1. Clearnet forum setup
  2. Tor network forum setup

Clearnet forum setup

Before diving into this setup, let me explain why we need two separate sites. The reason is to prepare you for any scenario - whether your target hosts their site on the Tor network or the regular internet, your skills should be adaptable to any environment.

A clearnet forum teaches you how to extract data from websites using browser automation. If you've ever used "Inspect Element" on a site and noticed differences between the page source code and the rendered elements, that's dynamic content loading - something we'll automate using Playwright.

We won't discuss the detailed forum setup here, but I can assure you it takes only a few minutes. To get started, open the following link and follow the guide:

https://github.com/CyberMounties/clearnet_forum

Your forum should look like this after setup:

Clearnet Forum First Look

If you see new messages posts in shoutbox or new posts automatically posted in sellers place, that's totally intended. It's a way for me to make the site look live with real-time activity.

You can also find posts in different languages such as Russian, Chinese & Korean:

Clearnet Forum - Sellers Marketplace

Tor network forum setup

A Tor forum serves a similar purpose to a clearnet forum, but with a key difference: no JavaScript is used. This makes data extraction much easier because all content is loaded directly from the backend to the frontend. Everything becomes available when you view the page source, making it simpler to fetch pages.

To get started with the setup, open the following link and follow the guide:

https://github.com/CyberMounties/tornet_forum

This is how the forum looks like after setup, picture from Tor browser:

Tornet Forum First Look

It's your task to fully explore both of these sites. Familiarizing yourself with the site is a must-do.