German police have taken down Russian-language illegal darknet marketplace Hydra.
- Hydra is the largest such network in the world. Founded in 2015, Hydra sold illegal drugs, stolen credit card data, counterfeit currency and fake identity documents, masking the identities of those involved using the Tor encryption network.
- The Hydra marketplace had around 17 million customer accounts and over 19,000 vendor accounts, according to the BKA federal police.
- Hydra specialised in same-day ‘dead drop’ services, where drug dealers (vendors) hide packages in public places before informing customers of the pick-up location.
What is darknet ?
- The darknet refers to networks that are not indexed by search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.
- These are networks that are only available to a select group of people and not to the general internet public, and only accessible via authorization, specific software and configurations.
- Users of this darknet are truly anonymous, and it is this anonymity that attracted the criminal element to it.
- Here they are free to conduct their business and express themselves without fear of repercussion.
- It has become a haven for criminals selling drugs and guns, human trafficking and scamming.
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