Germany: German authorities announced Tuesday that they had taken down the servers of Hydra, the world’s largest illegal darknet bazaar, and confiscated bitcoins worth $23 million.
The BKA federal police said in a statement that suspects are being probed for “running illicit trade platforms on the internet on a commercial basis.”
Germany counters on Illegal marketplace
Germany counters illegal marketplace/ “Illegal darknet marketplace ‘Hydra Market’ shut down,” the statement read. According to the BKA, investigations into the Russian unlawful marketplace began in August 2021 and included numerous US authorities.
Hydra was founded in 2015 to service Russian-speaking markets, selling narcotics as well as stolen credit card data, counterfeit money, and bogus identification documents while using the Tor encryption network to hide the identities of people engaged. According to the BKA, the marketplace had roughly 17 million user accounts and over 19,000 vendor accounts.
According to the report, “the Hydra market was probably the unlawful marketplace with the biggest revenue worldwide” in 2020, with sales of at least 1.23 billion euros. It noted that the platform’s “Bitcoin Bank Mixer,” a program for hiding digital transactions, had made investigations particularly tough. On the marketplace’s website, a seizure banner has been posted.
The “darknet” is a secret network of websites that can only be accessed with certain software or authorizations, assuring user anonymity. Following a surge in use during the coronavirus epidemic, such networks have come under heightened scrutiny from international law enforcement.
Last year, a German-led police sting brought down the infamous darknet marketplace DarkMarket, which had roughly 500,000 members and over 2,400 dealers throughout the world.