Malicious Mass Hyper-V Virtual Machine Shutdown via PowerShell by Kraken Ransomware

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Impact

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.001PowerShell
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
- T1490Inhibit System Recovery

What it detects

This rule detects PowerShell forcibly stopping Hyper-V virtual machines by piping Get-VM into Stop-VM with the force and turnoff switches. This technique is used by the Kraken ransomware group to shut down virtualized workloads before encryption. Terminating running virtual machines unlocks their files for encryption and maximizes operational impact.

Reporting behind it

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Malicious Mass Hyper-V Virtual Machine Shutdown via PowerShell by Kraken Ransomware

Pivot detection · T1059.001 · 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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