Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), announced that the world’s largest illegal dark web marketplace, Hydra, has been takedown.
Bitcoins equivalent to approximately €23 million were seized, which are attributed to the marketplace. The BKA 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.
Hydra which was launched in 2015 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.
It was reported that the cybercriminals now use it to conduct illicit sales of stolen credit cards, SIM cards, and counterfeit documents and IDs, among other offerings and also to obfuscate their own digital transactions through regional exchanges and extended money laundering tactics.
It is estimated that Hydra’s annual transaction volumes have crossed $1.37 billion by the end of 2020, marking a staggering rise from a mere $9.40 million in 2016. Around 17 million customer and over 19,000 seller accounts are said to have been registered on the marketplace.
The marketplace website is now greeted with 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.”
Image Credits : CipherTrace
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