German Federal Police shut down Russian cybercrime darknet servers!

[thewayne]

German law enforcement seized the servers running the Russian Hydra darknet system which was a marketplace largely used to market narcotics, stolen bitcoin and credit cards, etc. They seized over $25mil U.S. in bitcoin, which makes it quite a seizure and probably upsets a few Russian hackers.

From the article: "With about 17 million customer accounts and 19,000 sellers, Germany’s BKA and Central Office for Combatting Cybercrime (ZIT) say Hydra has the highest turnover rate out of any illegal market in the world, estimating a turnover of about €1.23 billion (~$1.35 million USD) in 2020 alone. German authorities note that cryptocurrency transactions on Hydra are especially hard to track due to a crypto-concealing service called the Bitcoin Bank Mixer."

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/5/23011377/germany-servers-russian-darknet-site-hydra-bitcoin

Comments

[dewline]

And this crime group calls themselves "Hydra"!

What the actual Hell, right?

[thewayne]

Heh.  Yeah.  I completely missed that when I first read it!  They sure do move a lot of money, that's for sure!  The way these are formal operations with HR, health plans, vacation leave, etc. is scarily impressive and shows a pretty amazing level of organization.

[kaishin108]

That is great news!

[thewayne]

While it won't completely shut down the criminals, it'll certainly hurt them, and will definitely damage their reputation.

[kaishin108]

Yes! And hopefully they lost a lot of their dark money.

[disneydream06]

Thank you German Federal Police.
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

That will hopefully put a dent in the operations. Although it's usually true that getting one means two or more will spring up in its absence.