The world’s largest dark web is down

Cybercrime organization ZIT and Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office BKA announced on April 5 that they had closed Hydra, seizing the website’s server along with more than 543 Bitcoins, equivalent to more than 25 million USD. Hydra’s interface has also been changed to ZIT and BKA announcements.

The shutdown was carried out after an investigation by German and American security services into the partners and administrators of this network from August 2021. The BKA said an extensive investigation is still underway and no arrests have been made.

Darknet is a term for a network of websites operating in the background, to distinguish it from the clearnet – websites that operate openly and can be found through search engines like Google. Before being shut down, Hydra was the largest darknet marketplace in the world, in terms of the number of users as well as the volume of transactions made.

This market was established in 2015, using the main language is Russian. Criminals join this network to exchange drugs, fake documents, personal data, hacking services. In addition, Hydra also provides cryptocurrency withdrawals for money laundering purposes. Couple hack Bitfinex exchange recently arrested was also a customer of this service.

As announced by the investigative agency, Hydra has about 19,000 accounts and serves 17 million customers worldwide. Revenue in 2020 reached 1.23 billion euros. Bitcoin transaction volume has reached 5 billion USD since its inception.

According to Elliptic, taking down Hydra will create a void in the darkweb ecosystem of cybercriminals. In the period from 2021 to present, a series of darknet markets around the world have been closed or voluntarily shut down. However, in the event that the team has not been arrested, it is not ruled out that they will continue to build new versions of the system.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities also shut down a series of large darknets that specialize in buying and selling credit card information. Raidforumthe world’s largest hacker forum on clearnet, also had its domain name seized and shut down since the end of February.

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