Originally Syndicated on May 10, 2023 @ 12:07 pm
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Hydra shut down by German police
Russian black market Hydra was shut down by the German police. In Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, he sold narcotics, falsified passports, and stole data. In terms of rivals, Hydra had the most revenue with $1.3 billion in 2020.
In response, the largest and most well-known darknet market in the world, Hydra, was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). based on papers from the US Department of the Treasury about how Hydra operated.
A brief history of Hydra
The most well-known and biggest darknet market in the world, Hydra, was introduced in 2015 and is based in Russia. Ransomware, hacking services, malware, stolen personal data, fake money, stolen virtual currency, and pharmaceuticals are just a few of its products.
An OFAC investigation found that Ryuk, Sodinokibi, and Conti ransomware variants were among the $8 million in ransomware revenues that passed via Hydra virtual currency accounts. Blockchain experts estimate that 86 percent of the illicit bitcoins that Russian virtual currency exchanges directly received in 2019 came from it. Before the current event, Hydra’s income had risen dramatically from less than $10 million in 2016 to over $1.3 billion in 2020. The link between Hydra and Russian shadow banking makes it feasible for revenues to rise.
It was an online black market where people, mostly from Russian-speaking nations, could buy and sell unlawful products and services, including narcotics, identity fraud, stolen bank data, and money-laundering services. On it, transactions were made using cryptocurrencies, and there was a fee associated with each transaction.
The US also said that 30-year-old Russian Dmitry Olegovich Pavlov, who operated and oversaw servers utilized by Hydra, will be charged with conspiracy to sell narcotics and conspiracy to launder money in connection with the closing of it.
How does Hydra operate?
The published indictment claims that customers and sellers on it may each register accounts in order to view and buy each other’s products, as well as for vendors to advertise their unlawful goods. Vendors from it provided a range of illegal substances for sale, including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD, and other opiates. On it, vendors publicly promoted their narcotics, typically with images and a description of the narcotic. The Hydra website prominently included seller ratings and reviews. Buyers gave merchants and their goods a five-star rating system.
Additionally, it had a large number of sellers of phony IDs. Users might filter or arrange their results by item price to find retailers who offer identity documents like US passports and driver’s licenses. Many vendors of phony identification have offered to customize papers using the purchasers’ photographs or other information.
Through it, other merchants also offered hacking tools and services. Hacker service providers often allow their customers unauthorized access to their preferred web accounts. As a result, purchasers may pick their targets and employ skilled hackers to read their victims’ communications and take over their accounts.
Additionally, its merchants provided a broad range of money laundering and “cash out” services that allowed users to exchange their bitcoin (BTC) for a variety of currencies accepted by Hydra’s numerous vendors. Additionally, it provided an internal mixing service to clean up provider withdrawals before processing them.
Customers may pay a charge to transmit bitcoins to specific recipients through mixing services, which hide the ownership or source of the bitcoins. The money-laundering capabilities of it were so highly desired that some users set up shell provider accounts just to send money through its Bitcoin wallets as a money-laundering strategy.
According to the Cheka-OGPU’s telegram channel, Pavlov has been in charge of the Promservice LLC business since about November 2015, also known as Full Drive Hosting Company, All Wheels, and 4x4host.ru, which managed the servers (“Promservis”). Thousands of drug dealers and other illegal sellers used it as a platform to distribute massive amounts of illegal drugs and other goods and services to thousands of buyers and launder billions of dollars at the time, and Pavlov was in charge of its servers through his business Promservice.
Participation in a conspiracy
In his capacity as a server administrator for Hydra, Pavlov is accused of conspiring with other operators to further the success of the website by supplying the vital support system needed for it to function and flourish in the cutthroat dark web market. At the same time, Pavlov is accused of aiding Hydra’s operations and enabling it to cash in on millions of dollars in fees from shady transactions made on the website.
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