Dark Web Roast - October 2025 Edition

By Trellix Advanced Research Center · November 13, 2025

Executive Summary

Welcome to October 2025, where the cybercrime underground has officially become more absurd than a fever dream. This month’s headline was xltshirt being royally fleeced out of $3,000 for Google Ads credits and then running to forum moderators for a refund, like it's an underground Better Business Bureau, demonstrating even criminals can't trust each other. It was closely followed by actor c2flow's meltdown after discovering their discreet malware checking service was hilariously uploading everything straight to VirusTotal—the ultimate operational security blunder. Adding to the collective incompetence, petrus1sec claimed to have leaked a massive “1TB” of Roblox data that turned out to be a mere 666 megabytes of hot air, proving they struggle with both basic storage unit conversions and telling a believable lie. October proved the dark web is less sophisticated cyber threat and more chaotic group project where “nobody read the instructions" and the only thing exfiltrated is our patience. Buckle up, because the criminals are currently tripping over their own keyboard cables, and it's a spectacle.

This month in the DarkRoast

💸 The $3,000 Google ads Godzilla Scam

xltshirt learned the hard way that even criminals can't trust other criminals when they got absolutely fleeced by Godzilla on the XSS forum for $3,000 worth of Google Ads credits that never materialized. The scammer ghosted harder than a ransomware victim's encrypted files, leaving xltshirt to create a forum thread that reads like a breakup text written through tears. What makes this beautiful poetry is watching someone who presumably makes their living scamming others experience the same betrayal, then running to forum moderators expecting some kind of underground Better Business Bureau intervention. The moderators, bless them, could only offer the digital equivalent of thoughts and prayers since there's no refund policy in the "honour among thieves" handbook. The thread became a monument to the fundamental problem with criminal marketplaces: when everyone's a scammer, who do you scam when you get scammed? The universe has a sense of humour, and it's currently laughing at xltshirt's $3,000 life lesson.

🔍 The VirusTotal intelligence leak

Over on the Exploit forum, actor c2flow had an absolute meltdown after discovering a malware-checking service was uploading everything to VirusTotal. The service literally had a URL called "app.cpibot.com/index.php/virustotal" and c2flow was shocked—SHOCKED—that his precious malware samples were being posted straight to the world's most public malware database. "I'm in shock with this. There's nothing more to say here," they lament in Russian. Imagine hiring a "discreet" file checker only to realize they're basically posting your malware to the cybersecurity equivalent of Times Square. It’s like asking someone to secretly dispose of stolen goods and watching them dump everything at the police station's front desk whilst livestreaming it. If you're trusting random services to check your malware's "cleanliness", you deserve the VirusTotal bot logs that follow. The operational security here is so bad it's almost educational.

🎨 The coder who won't do ransomware

XDRevil is apparently the hitman with selective ethics, advertising their coding services on Telegram with the caveat that they absolutely will not touch ransomware because it "lacks purpose." It’s the malware development equivalent of a vegetarian who still eats chicken because birds don't count. They'll happily code you a stealer, a crypter, or whatever other digital felony tool you need, but ransomware? That's where they draw their very specific moral line in the sand. It's refreshing to see a criminal with refined taste in malware development, someone who views ransomware as gauche and unsophisticated compared to the artisanal craft of credential theft. The post reads like a freelancer profile on Upwork, except instead of "I don't work weekends," it's "I won't encrypt your files for money." One has to wonder what philosophical framework led to this conclusion—perhaps they attended a TED talk about purposeful cybercrime and had an awakening. XDRevil is out here proving that, even in the underground, everyone's a critic with standards— even if those standards make absolutely no logical sense.

🔧 The TP-link router exploit that requires a PhD

fenix on the Damagelib forum has blessed us with a TP-Link router exploit so convoluted it makes NASA launch sequences look straightforward. The vulnerability requires physical access, specific firmware versions, a particular network configuration, the victim not having changed default credentials, and presumably a full moon with Mercury in retrograde. It’s the cybersecurity equivalent of building a Rube Goldberg machine to turn on a light switch—technically impressive but spectacularly impractical. By the time you've verified all the preconditions, gained physical access, and executed this multi-stage attack, the victim has probably already unplugged the router because their Wi-Fi was slow and bought a new one from Amazon. The exploit documentation spans 47 pages and includes phrases like "assuming optimal environmental conditions," which effectively highlights that this is more theoretical physics than practical hacking. The forum's response was a mixture of genuine admiration for the technical complexity and bafflement at why anyone would invest this much effort into compromising a device you could just hit with a hammer for a similar effect.

🛒 The pentesters looking for ransomware

TestDoubleVpn is out here shopping for ransomware-as-a-service options on the RAMP forum, like they're comparing enterprise SaaS platforms on G2 Crowd, complete with questions about features, support, and, presumably, whether there's a Zendesk integration for victim communications. The post reads like someone doing due diligence for a Series A investment, except instead of evaluating CRM software, they're comparing which ransomware operation has the best encryption algorithms and affiliate terms. They want to know about success rates, detection evasion, and payment processing with the same energy as a startup founder researching payment gateways. What's truly special is watching someone approach ransomware deployment with more professionalism and research than most legitimate businesses put into their vendor selection process. The underground marketplace has apparently evolved to the point where criminals expect product demos, customer testimonials, and probably a free trial period before committing to their ransomware platform of choice. TestDoubleVpn is asking questions with such thoroughness that they've somehow managed to make ransomware shopping look more ethical and professional than how Fortune 500 companies select their suppliers.

🎮 The Roblox "1TB" leak

petrus1sec announced on Telegram that they'd leaked "1TB" of Roblox data, which sounds impressive until you do the maths and realize that 1.5 million accounts at "1TB" would require each account to contain approximately 666 megabytes of data. Unless every Roblox player is storing the Lord of the Rings extended edition in 4K in their profile, someone definitely confused kilobytes with terabytes— or, more likely, just made up a number that sounded cool. The claim falls apart faster than a house of cards in a hurricane when you consider that most account data is usernames, emails, and hashed passwords, which typically clock in at a few kilobytes per record, not two-thirds of a gigabyte. This is the data breach equivalent of claiming you caught a fish "this big" whilst spreading your arms wider than physically possible. The underground community presumably saw this claim and either laughed or cried, depending on whether they've also struggled with basic storage unit conversions. petrus1sec has successfully demonstrated that you can make any breach sound more impressive by simply adding zeros to the storage size, accuracy be damned. Perhaps next month we'll see a claim of "50 petabytes of Discord DMs" that turns out to be a single screenshot.

📧 ProtonMail's "You're under investigation" panic attack

The ProtonMail panic of October 2025 deserves its own comedy special. User sak99 on the BlackHatWorld forum receives a message stating that their account is "under investigation for breach of Swiss criminal code," and immediately spirals into existential dread, wondering if everyone who got this message is "rotting in prison somewhere.” The paranoia is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then testguytest swoops in with the reality check: "I got this in April, I'm convinced they content-ID'd some porn and just banned the account." ProtonMail's standard ban message has successfully terrorized the cybercrime community into thinking Swiss law enforcement personally reviews every sketchy email. Meanwhile, it's probably just an automated system flagging accounts, but the psychological warfare is working beautifully. Nothing says "secure communications" like mass panic over a form letter. The threat assessment? Fear is the most effective security measure.

Conclusion

As we close the books on October 2025, we're left with the inescapable conclusion that the underground has fully embraced chaos as a business strategy. This month, we witnessed a coder with such selective ethics that they declared ransomware too 'gauche' for their artisanal felony work, and an exploit so convoluted it ran 47 pages and was more theoretical physics than practical hacking. This delightful commitment to self-sabotage, combined with the fact thatmost of the community’s collective operational security consists of hope and prayer, suggests the dark web is less an organized crime syndicate and more a chaotic group project. If this is the future of cybercrime, the good guys might win simply by waiting for the threat actors to defeat themselves through sheer, beautiful stupidity. Same time next month for more digital disasters.

Disclaimer

While these incidents are genuinely amusing, they represent real criminal activities causing significant harm. This content is for threat intelligence and educational purposes only.

Discover the latest cybersecurity research from the Trellix Advanced Research Center: https://www.trellix.com/advanced-research-center/