German Police Take Down Hydra Market, a Major Dark Web Marketplace

German authorities say they've shut down Hydra Market, perhaps the largest illegal marketplace on the dark web. 

The country's Federal Criminal Police Office seized servers in Germany belonging to Hydra Market, forcing it offline, and confiscated 543 bitcoins ($24.8 million) from the marketplace. 

Founded in 2015, Hydra Market was the largest Russian-speaking marketplace on the dark web, according to cybersecurity firm Flashpoint. Users could visit the site via the Tor browser.

The marketplace was best known for selling illegal drugs. However, merchants on the platform also offered cryptocurrency laundering services, forged documents, stolen credit card numbers, counterfeit money, and illicit digital goods. 

"In 2021, Hydra accounted for an estimated 80% of all darknet market-related cryptocurrency transactions, and since 2015, the marketplace has received approximately $5.2 billion in cryptocurrency," said the US Justice Department, which helped German police shut down the marketplace. This included laundering funds for ransomware gangs Ryuk, Sodinokibi, and Conti, according to the US Treasury Department.

German authorities said the takedown came after an extensive investigation that began in August. “Around 17 million customer and over 19,000 seller accounts were registered on the marketplace,” German police said.  

“Its sales amounted to at least 1.23 billion euros ($1.34 billion) in 2020 alone,” they added. “In particular, the Bitcoin Bank Mixer, a service for obfuscating digital transactions provided by the platform, made crypto investigations extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies.”

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Despite today's action, it’s possible Hydra could return. An earlier report from Flashpoint and cryptocurrency tracking firm Chainalysis notes the market had at least 11 operators. German police also didn't say if arrests were made. But the US Justice Department did announce charges against a Russian resident named Dmitry Olegovich Pavlov for allegedly operating a service that leased servers to Hydra.

Russia usually doesn’t extradite hacking suspects to the West. Still, seizing the marketplace's servers may help investigators identify and track down whoever else administered the site. Flashpoint added: “The administrators of Hydra reportedly claim that the market is undergoing ‘technical works’ and have not acknowledged the takedown.”

Editors' Note: This story has been updated with information from US federal agencies.