Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-26
Updated
2026-09-26

ATT&CK techniques

Impact
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

What it detects

This rule detects vssadmin deleting all volume shadow copies quietly which Eldorado ransomware runs to inhibit system restore before encryption. Removing shadow copies prevents victims from recovering files without paying the ransom. It is important because shadow copy deletion is a reliable pre-encryption impact indicator.

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange
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 Mass Hyper-V Virtual Machine Shutdown via PowerShell by Kraken Ransomware
Suspicious Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin by Kraken Ransomware
Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin
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.