Germany’s Federal Crime Police Office (BKA) announced on Tuesday that it had shut down the server infrastructure for the Russian dark web marketplace Hydra, seizing €23 million ($25.2 million USD) in Bitcoin in the process.
🧵on Hydra, the largest Russian dark web marketplace, recently shut down by the German government and U.S. law enforcement. Here are some things you haven't heard.
— Justen (@JustenCharters) April 8, 2022
Hydra is a large dark web marketplace that serves as a hub for drugs, stolen credit card information, counterfeit bills, forged documents, and other illegal goods and services. The market primarily serves criminals in Russia and neighbouring countries. Drugs are pushed throughout the region by “treasuremen,” or dealers linked to the site, who hide them in geo-tagged pickup locations.
In response to the shutdown, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against Hydra and the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex. In addition, the US is working to identify over 100 cryptocurrency addresses linked to the illegal marketplace.
There are threads on Rutor that link to vendors where you can buy anything from weapons to hacks, narcotics, fake passports, SIM cards, document rendering, general crimes, and more. Nothing I share will be in Russian because it was automatically translated by a browser tool.
The most active thread on Rutor is about reuniting people after Hydra was shut down. The store manager is gathering his employees with the post in order to sell “treasures,” or what Hydra refers to as illicit goods. A user can be seen inquiring about where to order goods.
A user claims to be affiliated with Hydra and claims that the marketplace will be restored in this post. It’s unclear how that would happen given that its servers are no longer connected to the onion network.
With approximately 17 million customer accounts and 19,000 sellers, Germany’s BKA and Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) claim Hydra has the highest turnover rate of any illegal market in the world, with an estimated turnover of approximately €1.23 billion ($1.35 million USD) in 2020 alone. German authorities note that cryptocurrency transactions on Hydra are especially difficult to track due to the Bitcoin Bank Mixer, a crypto-concealing service.
