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 vssadmin deleting all volume shadow copies which the actors in the Sliver and PoshC2 toolkit intrusion ran to inhibit recovery ahead of impact and this matters because deleting every shadow copy removes the primary local restore path and is a defining pre encryption ransomware action rarely performed by legitimate administrators.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell WMI by Akira Ransomware

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Malicious Boot Recovery Tampering via Bcdedit (via process_creation)

Malicious Inhibition of System Recovery via Shadow Copy or Backup Deletion (via process_creation)

Malicious Windows Native Backup Deletion (via process_creation)

DragonForce Ransomware Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via WMIC ShadowCopy Where Delete (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Virtual Machine Termination and Snapshot Removal

Malicious Shadow Copy and Backup Deletion for Ransomware Recovery Inhibition

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.

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