Malicious Shadow Copy and Backup Deletion via vssadmin wmic and wbadmin (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 deletion of Volume Shadow Copies and system backups through vssadmin delete shadows, wmic shadowcopy delete and wbadmin delete commands used by the Hunters International ransomware group per Group-IB. Adversaries remove these recovery points to prevent restoration before encrypting data, so this activity is a strong indicator of imminent ransomware impact.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell Win32_ShadowCopy Remove-CimInstance (via process_creation)

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin

Malicious Inhibit System Recovery via Native Backup and Shadow Copy Deletion (via process_creation)

Malicious Inhibit System Recovery via bcdedit Boot Policy Change by Chaos Ransomware (via process_creation)

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion and Recovery Inhibition via process_creation

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion and Boot Recovery Tampering via Process Creation

Malicious Boot Configuration Set to Safe Mode with Networking via bcdedit

Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin to Inhibit Recovery

Suspicious Symlink Evaluation Enabled via fsutil

Malicious Shadow Copy and Backup Deletion via vssadmin wmic and wbadmin (via process_creation)

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.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →