A piece of fatalistic Irish wisdom may help you here: if it's for you it won't pass you by.
Or go to Lefty's and say that Ken sent you.
I'd assume somewhere private enough to not have much chance of law enforcement wandering in.
Yeah, the threat of 40 years in prison for pirating software would make them a little bit privacy paranoid I'd think.
It used to be IRC mainly. Efnet, later Linknet or similar. Often involved the group maintaining their own server linked to the network (preferably hosted by an admin of a big university). The server not only made sure that only encrypted connections were allowed (hi Blowfish), but also that clients authorized to use it automatically received a spoofed IP/hostname (something childish like @i.am.too.leet.for.paradox.org) to hide ones true location.
Feels like it's an invite only based club. If you have enough street cred, you'll get invited to join.
They're engaged in criminal activity, so secrecy about where they hang out is kind of the point.
Discord groups, and to a much lesser amount, places like gbatemp
I'm surprised they aren't moving to Matrix, privacy-wise.
Sure. Hang on a platform that logs everything to hell and back and can be disclosed at the drop of a hat. Nope.
Discord will probably get you next to some script kiddies but i doubt anyone serious is on there.