Whether that is just happenstance or collaboration is not clear, says Andras Toth-Czifra, a senior analyst with Flashpoint. We cannot offer you direct connections, so we can t say that Hydra is connected to this, or that, particular Russian government official, he says. But, with an organization as large as Hydra, there is the suspicion that the longer they continue relatively undisturbed, the more likely it gets that there has to be a connection to authorities that allows this.
The Hydra Dark Web market has seen massive growth in the past four years, while an early competitor the Russian Anonymous Marketplace, or RAMP shut down in 2017. The operators of RAMP had a reputation for targeting their competition using DDoS attacks and outing other operators by stealing and publishing their data.