Sure, lay it out. What did the color codes tell you about the attack chain? Did you see a pattern that points to a specific vulnerability or insider help? Any clue on who’s behind the breach? That’s what I need to dig into.

That sounds like a textbook case of sloppy privilege management. If the admin account never got revoked, whoever’s behind it could have sat on it for months, gathering creds, waiting for a weak password. The fact that the exfil went through plain FTP means they were willing to leave a clear trace; maybe they didn’t expect anyone to notice. Have you cross‑checked the account’s activity logs—login times, IP addresses, any other services accessed? Those details could point to a real person or at least narrow it down to a specific workstation. Also, check whether any other accounts were created or elevated around the same time; sometimes a rogue admin will spin up a backdoor. If you can pull the exact timestamps, we might be able to tie it to a shift pattern or a contractor’s schedule. Let me know what you find, and we can see if the trail leads to a name.

Sounds like the night‑shift analyst is the only one with those VPN creds, so that’s the suspect. Check the analyst’s work log, see if they had any reason to touch the admin account—maybe a support ticket, a tool install, or a recent audit. If nothing jumps out, you’ll need to trace the RDP session: look at the source machine, the process that launched the RDP client, and any scripts that ran. It could be an automated tool they set up or a manual move. If you can’t find a legitimate reason, the evidence points to misuse of a legitimate credential. That’s the angle you’ll want to pull in.