Malicious Stopping of Security or Backup Services Before Impact (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
- T1489Service Stop

What it detects

This rule detects service-control commands (net stop, sc stop or Stop-Service) targeting antivirus, EDR, SQL or backup services, a defense-impairment step ransomware operators run to disable protection and free locked files before encryption. Stopping security and backup services is an impact-precursor technique in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report. Detecting these commands surfaces the final staging move before data is encrypted.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1489 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Massive Processes Termination Burst (via process_creation)

Malicious Service Deactivation - Command (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Virtual Machine Termination and Snapshot Removal

Malicious Massive Services Deletion Burst (via process_creation)

Malicious Security Service Tampering via wmic PathName Query (via process_creation)

Suspicious GhostLocker Watchdog Process Execution (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Virtual Machine Termination and Snapshot Removal via esxcli and vim-cmd (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Virtual Machine Termination via esxcli (via process_creation)

Malicious Massive Services Termination Burst (via process_creation)

Malicious Stopping of Security or Backup Services Before Impact (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1489 · 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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