Malicious Recovery Inhibition via Shadow Copy and WinRE Tampering

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 command lines that delete Volume Shadow Copies with vssadmin or disable the Windows Recovery Environment with reagentc, actions used by NOVABLIGHT to prevent system and file recovery. Inhibiting recovery is a common precursor to destructive or extortion activity.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Symbolic Link Evaluation Enabled via fsutil by RansomHub Ransomware

Suspicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell WMI by Akira Ransomware

VSS Backup Deletion or Resize (via process_creation)

Malicious Boot Recovery Tampering via Bcdedit (via process_creation)

Malicious Inhibition of System Recovery via Shadow Copy or Backup Deletion (via process_creation)

Malicious Windows Native Backup Deletion (via process_creation)

DragonForce Ransomware Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via WMIC ShadowCopy Where Delete (via process_creation)

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin

Malicious ESXi Virtual Machine Termination and Snapshot Removal

Malicious Recovery Inhibition via Shadow Copy and WinRE Tampering

Pivot detection · T1490 · 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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