Introduction
Hydra is currently the biggest Russian language darknet Market (DNM). It is also much older than any existing English language DNMs. In December 2019,
hydraclubbioknikokex7njhwuahc2l67lfiz7z36md2jvopda7nchid.onion the Hydra crew announced the creation of several new projects, the most important of which are Eternos and AspaNET. The former is a new DNM for English-speaking crooks. The latter is a new darknet that will be an alternative to TOR. The Hydra crew initially planned to launch new projects in September 2020, but in June they postponed it for an unspecified time because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the events in the English speaking sphere of TOR during the last 18 months, current instability among DNMs and uncertainty among darknet users, it could be an opportune time for a new player to take the stage.
If the new Hydra market does indeed begin operations, it would become a significant part of the cybercriminal environment in the English language sphere. There is huge momentum behind the Hydra crew and the present moment is perfect to take over a large part of the illicit market on the darknets. Other cybercriminal groups will have to react somehow to the new competitor. Will they cooperate, compete, or go to war? It is also possible that these new projects won’t launch (or they will be operating only partially) and that Hydra’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO) was only a fraud targeting the darknet community.
What is Hydra?
The darknet Market Hydra was launched in 2015 as a market focused on drugs. At that time, the
main Russian DNM was RAMP. Many Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) citizens also used big Western DNMs: AlphaBay, Hansa Market and Dream Market. RAMP and Hydra’s peaceful competition stopped at the beginning of 2017 when both DNMs started to fight what is now referred to as "the DNM war." To see a brief history of Darknet Markets and Hydra’s influence on it look at the infographic timeline we've created. It will also help you structure all the information that we're about to revail.
In June and July 2017, AlphaBay and Hansa Market, the first and third biggest Western DNMs respectively, were seized by law enforcement during the law enforcement community’s Operation Bayonet. At the same time, Russian authorities seized RAMP, but it is not certain if it was part of the wider law enforcement action. Nevertheless, after the seizure of RAMP, Hydra became the biggest Russian DNM. According to the Hydra administrators’ statement and lenta.ru publications (more about lenta later) Hydra is one of the top 10 internet companies in Russia. Moreover, Hydra owners are so brazen that in the past they even bought ads on Youtube. It was removed after a short time, but it still can be found here
Hydra1Part of the ICO announcement from the Hydra website. First underlined element is about ads on Youtube and in the lenta.ru publications. In the second underlined sentence Hydra claims to be in the TOP 10 of the largest Russian internet companies.
Currently, Hydra is well known as an illegal drug-focused DNM. They are especially well known for using secret GPS-marked hiding places as a delivery method. Russians call such drug caches закладка 1. A courier delivers items bought on Hydra to the secret drug caches, which could be located between some bricks in a building, under a park bench or another similar place. Then the courier writes down the GPS coordinates and the buyer receives it with a message that the package is ready pick-up. To be able to provide such a delivery method, merchants from Hydra have to maintain crews of
couriers. That’s why this method is available only in Russia and CIS big cities.
On Hydra, one can buy not only illegal drugs-related merchandise, but also fraud-related: stolen credit cards (both dumps and fullz), sim cards, electronic money wallets, stolen accounts and counterfeit money. The number of their fraud product providers is much smaller than drugs suppliers, but they all are verified and trusted vendors.
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