Germany Shuts Down Russian Hydra DarkNet Market; Seize $25 Million in Bitcoin

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, the Bundeskriminalamt
(BKA), on Tuesday announced the official takedown of Hydra, the
world’s largest illegal dark web marketplace.

“[543] Bitcoins amounting to currently the equivalent of
approximately €23 million were seized, which are attributed to the
marketplace,” the BKA said^[1]
in a press release.

The agency attributed the shutdown of Hydra to an extensive
investigation operation conducted by its Central Office for
Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) in partnership with U.S. law enforcement
authorities since August 2021.

Launched in 2015, Hydra is a Russian-language dark web
marketplace that opened as a competitor to the now-defunct Russian
Anonymous Marketplace (aka RAMP), primarily focusing on the sales
of illegal narcotics before expanding their focus to peddle forged
documents and stolen credit cards.

“Cybercriminals now use it to conduct illicit sales of stolen
credit cards, SIM cards, and counterfeit documents and IDs, among
other offerings — as well as to obfuscate their own digital
transactions through regional exchanges and extended money
laundering tactics,” Flashpoint noted^[2]
in a May 2021 report.

Hydra’s annual transaction volumes are estimated to have crossed
$1.37 billion by the end of 2020, marking a staggering rise from a
mere $9.40 million in 2016. Roughly 17 million customer and over
19,000 seller accounts are said to have been registered on the
marketplace, the BKA said.

Visitors to the marketplace website are now greeted by a seizure
banner that says: “The platform and the criminal content have been
seized by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on behalf of the
Attorney General’s Office in Frankfurt am Main in the course of an
international coordinated law enforcement operation.”

The demise of Hydra follows a wave of recent law enforcement
actions^[3] against criminal
marketplaces since the start of the year, including that of UniCC,
Canadian HeadQuarters, and four Russian carding shops Ferum Shop,
Sky-Fraud, Trump’s Dumps, and UAS that specialized in the sales of
stolen credit cards.