The world’s largest dark web is down

On April 5, the ZIT Cybercrime Foundation and Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office BKA announced the shutdown of Hydra, the world’s largest darknet, and the seizure of over Bitcoins. 25 million USD.

Later, Hydra’s interface was also changed to the announcement of ZIT and BKA.

Hydra interface before being knocked down by the police. Photo: Bleeping Computer

Since August 2021, the German and American security services have been investigating the partners and administrators of this network. Currently, BKA is still continuing its extensive investigation and no arrests have been made.

Unlike clearnet – websites that are open to the public and can be found through search engines like Google, darknet is a term that refers to a network of websites operating in the background.

In terms of the number of users as well as the volume of transactions made, Hydra was the largest darknet market in the world before its collapse.

Hydra was founded in 2015, using mainly Russian. This network provides cryptocurrency withdrawals for the purpose of money laundering and is used by criminals to exchange drugs, hacking services, fake documents, personal data.

According to the results of the BKA investigation, Hydra has about 19,000 accounts and serves 17 million customers worldwide, reaching a turnover of 1.23 billion euros in 2020. Since its inception, it has made a volume of transactions. Bitcoin translation reached 5 billion USD.