Malicious System Recovery Inhibition via bcdedit and wbadmin before Ransomware (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 recovery-inhibition commands that disable Windows automatic recovery via bcdedit or delete the backup catalog via wbadmin, the pre-encryption destruction step in the CLFS zero-day intrusion that led to ransomware. Adversaries remove recovery options to maximize damage and pressure victims, so these commands appearing together with staging activity are a critical pre-ransomware indicator.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious ESXi execInstalledOnly Disabled via esxcli During Ransomware

Malicious Akira Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell WMI (via process_creation)

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via WMI PowerShell

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via WMI PowerShell (via ps_script)

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion for Recovery Inhibition

Malicious Boot Configuration Tampering via bcdedit [Intel471] #2

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion Before Ransomware Encryption

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin or WMIC (via process_creation)

Malicious System Recovery Inhibition via bcdedit and wbadmin before Ransomware (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.

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