Hydra, the world’s biggest cybercrime forum, shut down in police sting
Hydra, the world’s biggest cybercrime forum, is no more. Authorities in Germany have seized servers and other infrastructure used by the sprawling, billion-dollar enterprise along with a stash of about $25 million in bitcoin.
Hydra had been operating since at least 2015 and had seen a meteoric rise since then. In 2020, it had annual revenue of more than $1.37 billion, according to a 2021 report jointly published by security firm Flashpoint and blockchain analysis company Chainalysis. In 2016, the companies said Hydra had a revenue of just $9.4 million. German authorities said the site had 17 million customers and more than 19,000 seller accounts registered.
vailable exclusively through the Tor network, Hydra was a bazaar that brokered sales of narcotics, fake documents, cryptocurrency-laundering services, and other digital goods. Flashpoint and Chainalysis identified 11 core operators but said the marketplace was so big that it likely was staffed by “several dozen people, with clearly delineated responsibilities.” In a post published on Tuesday, Germany’s Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (known as ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said they confiscated Hydra’s server infrastructure and 543 bitcoins, worth about $25 million.
