Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via vssadmin or WMIC

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 Delete Shadows or wmic shadowcopy delete. Ransomware families in this report remove shadow copies to prevent victims from restoring encrypted files. Shadow copy deletion is a hallmark inhibit-recovery step performed during ransomware execution.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via wmic and vssadmin (via process_creation)

Malicious System Recovery Inhibition via bcdedit and vssadmin in Mallox

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via WMIC via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Suspicious Anti-Recovery Zeroing via fsutil setZeroData (via process_creation)

Malicious Shadow Copy Removal via WMI PowerShell

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via vssadmin

Malicious Inhibit System Recovery via Shadow Copy and Boot Config Tampering (via process_creation)

Malicious Recovery Disablement via Bcdedit RecoveryEnabled No

Suspicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via vssadmin or wmic

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via vssadmin or WMIC

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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