Digital Shadows has identified Nulledflix, a brand new live-streaming service on the English-language cybercriminal platform Nulled that enables members to watch live streams together.

According to Digital Shadows, on June 03, 2020, Nulled forum’s May 2020 “Member of the Month” announced the launch of their self-developed streaming service Nulledflix. According to the user, Nulledflix is an Ultra High-Quality streaming service that allows forum users to “watch live streams of movies, TV shows, memes, and NSFW for free.” The announcement stated that Nulledflix would have a “chatbox” function via which users could engage in live chat during streams. 

Thread introducing Nulledflix. Image courtesy of Digital Shadows.

The post notes that at first live streams would “only be made by staff,” but the number of members able to make their streams would be increased in the foreseeable future. Nulledflix purportedly “does not have any advertising or way of making money”; there was no indication as to whether the service would receive any support from Nulled staff or other forum members to develop and maintain the streaming system, says the research team.

"If the service proves popular and is opened up to more users, some form of support will likely become necessary to maintain the service around the clock, with more live-streams scheduled for a consistently growing audience," they add.  "The issue of developing and maintaining Nulledflix appears to be already causing some downtime for the service: Nulledflix’s creator has taken the service down temporarily until they have “enough time” to work on unspecified issues. Nulledflix is expected to reopen “in a month or less” -an extended outage for a new service trying to bump up the number of users."

The reactions from the Nulled community to Nulledflix’s launch have been positive, notes Digital Shadows, with the initial announcement quickly receiving well over 20 comments from forum members congratulating its creator and thanking them for taking the initiative to create the streaming service.

Nulledflix can be used free of charge, and the service reportedly does not receive any funding through advertisements or by other means. "So it appears that money is not the motivating factor for this service. Cybercriminal forums will always be linked to criminal activity, but as Nulledflix shows, forum users do not exclusively use these platforms to conduct illicit activity. Just like traditional, non-criminal forums, these sites operate as a community for sharing information that has nothing to do with criminal profit. This includes discussions on leisure activities such as movies, music, and gaming. Users often create threads in the “Lounge”, or dedicated Movie and Music sections, asking about other users’ favorite artists, what type of music they are listening to, what movies they like, and opinions on new movie releases," says the research team. 

For more findings and information, please visit https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/nulledflix-nulled-forum-streaming-service/