Michael Caughey
Distinguished Engineer, Tactical Lead at Capital One
Virginia, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Caughey is a Distinguished Engineer and Tactical Lead with over a decade of hands-on experience building offensive security tooling and leading red-team operations at Capital One. He blends deep Windows kernel development (rootkits, loaders, drivers), reverse engineering, and exploit development with emerging offensive ML/GenAI capabilities to prototype high-impact attack chains and custom C2 infrastructure. Michael has led end-to-end operations from annual planning and resource management to real-time findings communication, while mentoring junior engineers in both technical and soft skills. His background spans embedded and firmware exploitation, hardware/Bluetooth/JTAG hacking, and physical/social attack vectors, reflecting a rare full-spectrum adversarial perspective. Certified across multiple elite programs (OSCE, OSCP, CRTP, CEH) and holder of a master’s in Information Systems Management focused on security, he pairs formal security rigor with 30+ years of software development experience. Outside work he’s applied his technical discipline to building commercial mobile apps and even teaches martial arts, underscoring a practical, hands-on ethos.
10 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Hardware Hacking IoT Bluetooth & JTAG, Hardware Hacking IoT Bluetooth & JTAG at AtiffyWindows Kernel Rootkits, Windows Kernel Rootkits at Code MachineComputer Science, Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth UniversityIoT Firmware Exploitation, IoT Firmware Exploitation at Tactical Network SolutionsMaster’s Degree Information Systems Management focused on Security Management, Master’s Degree Information Systems Management focused on Security Management at Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry UniversityMalware Development, Malware Development at Sektor7Bachelor’s Degree Technical Management, Bachelor’s Degree Technical Management at DeVry University
Stackoverflow
57reputation
4kreached
1answer
4questions
Github Skills (69)
gsm10
simulate9
wireless9
golang9
programming-language9
python9
ai-security9
usb9
arduino9
driver9
go9
callback9
generative-ai8
ai8
github-api8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
osok/BRAT
Feb 2017 - Sep 2017
Contributions:72 commits, 68 pushes, 1 branch in 7 months
osok/cursor-startup
May 2025 - Sep 2025
Contributions:16 pushes, 1 branch in 4 months
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