Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via WMI PowerShell

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 PowerShell that enumerates Win32_Shadowcopy objects and pipes them to Remove-WmiObject to destroy volume shadow copies, an inhibit-recovery step preceding encryption. This behavior was observed in RMM-enabled intrusions leading to Akira ransomware. Removing shadow copies denies victims local recovery and signals imminent ransomware detonation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1490 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell Child Process via process_creation

Malicious bcdedit Recovery Tampering Disabling Windows Boot Repair

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via Vssadmin Quiet

Malicious Boot Recovery Tampering via Bcdedit

Suspicious Free Space Wiping via Cipher

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via WMIC by DragonForce Ransomware (via process_creation)

Suspicious Symlink Evaluation Enablement via fsutil behavior set (via process_creation)

Malicious Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell Win32_ShadowCopy Remove-CimInstance (via process_creation)

Malicious Shadow Copy and Backup Deletion via vssadmin wmic and wbadmin (via process_creation)

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via WMI PowerShell

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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