Germany: The servers of Hydra Market, the most prominent Russian darknet platform for drug sales and money laundering, were taken down by German police.
Police were able to seize 543 bitcoins from Hydra's winnings, which are currently worth just over $25 million.
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The seized funds show the size of the Hydra marketplace, which counted around 19,000 registered seller accounts serving at least 17 million customers worldwide.
In a statement today, the Central Cybercrime Office (ZIT) and the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) estimate that Hydra Market had a turnover of $1.35 billion in 2020, making it the largest dark web market in the world.
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In addition to drug and money laundering services, which were the focus, Hydra also offered stolen databases, forged documents, and hacking services.
Research in a dark space
For now, Hydra's homepage shows that the BKA acting on behalf of the Public Prosecutor in Frankfurt am Main seized the market infrastructure after a coordinated international law enforcement effort.
This action was made possible after a lengthy investigation directed against the previously unknown operators and administrators of the platform.
As noted in the BKA announcement, Hydra Market operated a Bitcoin Bank Mixer, which concealed all cryptocurrency made on the platform, making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to track money obtained from illegal activities.
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At present, it is unknown whether German authorities have made any arrests or whether they have any identifying information or even clues about the Hydra core group.
Meanwhile, the seized equipment likely contains incriminating evidence about Hydra vendors and customers, so these could be analyzed in an upcoming second phase.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
