Malicious BlackCat Boot Configuration Change to Safe Mode with Networking via bcdedit (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Impact

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
- T1490Inhibit System Recovery

What it detects

This rule detects bcdedit being used to force the system to boot into Safe Mode with networking, a pre-ransomware defense-evasion step observed in the Nitrogen campaign before BlackCat encryption. Adversaries reboot endpoints into Safe Mode so that most security agents do not load while the ransomware still reaches network shares, making this a high-value early indicator of imminent encryption.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious ESXi Management Agent Stop via vpxa init Script (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Firewall Disable via esxcli (via process_creation)

Suspicious Anti-Recovery Zeroing via fsutil setZeroData (via process_creation)

Malicious Shadow Copy Removal via WMI PowerShell

Malicious BlackCat Boot Configuration Change to Safe Mode with Networking via bcdedit (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1685 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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