Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via vssadmin

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 via vssadmin, an inhibit-recovery technique used by Snatch and many other ransomware families to prevent victims from restoring encrypted files. Legitimate administrative shadow copy deletion exists but is uncommon on endpoints. Combined with other ransomware indicators this behavior is high fidelity.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

Malicious DragonForce Shadow Copy Deletion via Native Utilities (via process_creation)

Suspicious Shadow Copy Deletion via WMIC or PowerShell (via process_creation)

Malicious Boot Recovery Tampering via bcdedit (via process_creation)

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via BlackSuit Ransomware

Malicious Boot Configuration Tampering to Disable Recovery via BlackSuit Ransomware

Malicious Boot Configuration Tampering via bcdedit

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via WMI PowerShell

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell Child Process via process_creation

Malicious bcdedit Recovery Tampering Disabling Windows Boot Repair

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.

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 →