Michael Tigges

Principal Tactical Response Analyst @HuntressLabs | @SANS_EDU Alumni | Python Security Researcher

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

Thoughts & SecOps/IR workflows for Agentic AI: https://t.co/G8C219J3LU

This mostly just consolidates a heavy period of "mess around" I've been in with AI into some tangible takeaways and real world systems.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

With all the chaos going on right now, I'm here to remind you that LLM-aided/agentic attacks are still just... intrusions.

They may evolve at different rates, but they fundamentally boil down to the same observability and alerting requirements that a human intruder would for detection.

In the middle of "vulnpocalypse", the strongest takeaway shouldn't be that LLMs are getting more advanced, it should be that organizations should be investing in basic security fundamentals and posture management to help detect and defeat these threats.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

So... I named a malware campaign awhile ago.

I just googled said name and lo and behold-- all NSFW.

I'm not sure if this is an effective commentary on how sheltered I am, or if I should simply have my naming rights revoked.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

@ex_raritas I wish it wasn't so annoying to query social media platforms at scale-- would be really interesting to see what kind of overlaps/bots appear if you start digging into the millions of Xeets or Reddit posts or whatever side by side.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

@DustinKathol @vxunderground Do you want to elaborate on that or just leave it on old school ingenuity?

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

@DustinKathol @vxunderground Update to the above:
More than a singular run, still literally just exfiltrating Chrome History. 🥱

Whatever the operator is doing in this whole saga, they're seemingly not very keen on doing anything super malicious aside from being annoying.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

Have you seen any credential theft whatsoever?

I'd be very interested; I've reverse engineered this, analyzed well over 1000 executions in production environments at scale, and not once have I seen any behavior consistent with credential theft.

I have, however, seen numerous AI RE runs call the browser reboot feature App-Bound Encryption bypass. Which... it is not.

In the singular run we observed with an additional payload, a chrome history download was performed on the host; it didn't touch any credential files.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

@kyREcon @_josehelps @HuntressLabs @M_haggis https://t.co/sISVZVN0sc

It has since been uploaded to VirusTotal if that helps in the meantime. :)

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

@kyREcon @_josehelps @HuntressLabs @M_haggis May be thinking of the CS Beacon though-- this case was from awhile ago.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

@_josehelps @HuntressLabs @M_haggis Yes; the vRx binary was unsigned. A pass with Shellter V12 on the binary had modified a single instruction to redirect flow to the Shellter packed portion and subsequently the Cobalt Strike beacon.

C2 was at tlcnode[.]com.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

I'm sad that we're closing our doors, but I'm happy that this project did what it was designed to do-- some good in the world while helping give a place for the next generation of developers and security professionals to gain hands on experience solving real world problems.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

Today, Vipyr Security-- a home grown open source security organization I started-- is closing its doors.

We did some cool shit-- ended up in some publications by ESET, Unit42-- even knocked down the durabletask compromise on PyPI.

But all good things must come to an end.

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

Most of our nerds aren't on Twitter-- or at least I don't know their handles. I paid out of my own pocket for hosting and infrastructure. Contributors were free to work on what they wanted, to help secure and prevent malware proliferation on PyPI.

Many have gone on to pursue great things at massive enterprises.

[Jake @inkmoro]

👀 @watchtowrcyber Intel captured real, hands-on-keyboard exploitation of the recent PaperCut NG/MF vulnerabilities, including fully decrypting webshell and C2 comms.

Check it out: https://t.co/NiGfz7Yx1Q

[Michael Tigges @sudo_Rem]

Super happy to work at a company like @HuntressLabs that allows and enables us to wreck adversaries in literally every way you can dream up. This time?

Vuln research!

Few things on this, to clear the air in a more casual tone, for those that stumble upon this:
- We were responding to an actively-exploited v2026.3.1.10 instance. (Fully patched.)
- While doing that investigation, we were digging into the "how" instead of the "who", "what", and "where"; as that telemetry no longer existed.
- In the course of that investigation, we discovered a plausible series of vulnerabilities that could explain that behavior.

To be abundantly clear-- we do not know what the adversary exploited in the v2026.3.1.10 instance. I don't want that to be what people walk away with-- we instead found a plausible explanation, and worked with the excellent security team at N-Able to help shore up their defenses.

A lot of unknowns, a lot of questions, and I wish I had the answers.

[Huntress @HuntressLabs]

RAPID RESPONSE UPDATE: Huntress has produced a proof of concept (PoC) of a new vulnerability chain (CVE-2026-86206 & CVE-2026-86207) in N-central.

This is distinct from the August flaws, allowing attackers to bypass access controls to create unauthorized administrative accounts.