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 all volume shadow copies via vssadmin with the quiet flag. This behavior matches BlackSuit ransomware operated by Ignoble Scorpius which removes shadow copies to inhibit system recovery before encryption. Shadow copy deletion is a strong pre-encryption indicator and warrants immediate response to prevent irreversible data loss.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

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 System Recovery Inhibition via bcdedit and wbadmin before Ransomware (via process_creation)

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 via vssadmin

Pivot detection · T1490 · 9 related

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