Hydra Takedown: A discussion with experts from U.S. Treasury, Flashpoint and TRM Labs

Todd Conklin is the US Department of the Treasury's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Cyber and Chief AI Officer. Prior to this position he has served in various roles at Treasury, including deputy assistant secretary for cyber threat intelligence (CTI) and as a counselor to the deputy secretary.

Todd also served at the US Secret Service as an Investigator and as an intelligence officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

Vlad Cuiujuclu is a Team Lead at Flashpoint, where he focuses on cybercrime and Deep & Dark Web intelligence. Cuiujuclu is especially interested in the Russian-language segment of the DDW, various fraud techniques, as well as emerging TTPs that are commonly used by threat actors in Eastern Europe.

While at the FBI, Mr. Armstrong was the Unit Chief of the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Finance Targeting Unit (CTFTU) where he led teams that leveraged financial intelligence to initiate and enhance illicit finance investigations. In addition, Mr. Armstrong was the program manager of the Virtual Currency Evolving Threat team, where he led some of the largest cryptocurrency-related investigations including the dismantling of three terrorist financing cyber-enabled campaigns, involving Hamas, ISIS, and al-Qaeda. He received the FinCEN Director’s Award in 2022 for that work. In addition, Mr. Armstrong received the 2020 FinCEN Director’s Award for his work investigating North Korean cybercriminal and proliferation activity, the 2022 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Award, the Homeland Security Director’s Award, and numerous others.

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