Self-Deletion via Ping Loopback Delay and Del Command

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1070.004File Deletion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a command line that pings the loopback address to introduce a delay before deleting a file, the self-cleanup routine used by PlayBoy Locker to remove its own binary. Chaining ping 127.0.0.1 with del is a common anti-forensic indicator-removal technique in malware.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1070.004 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Self-Delete Chain via Loopback Ping and File Deletion (via process_creation)

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

Suspicious Zone.Identifier Mark-of-the-Web Removal (via process_creation)

Suspicious Self-Deletion of Dropper via Command Line

Suspicious Self-Deletion via Choice Timer and Del Command via Cmd (via process_creation)

Suspicious Jump List AutomaticDestinations Deletion via Cmd (via process_creation)

Suspicious Self-Delete via cmd choice Timeout and Del

Suspicious Ping Loopback Delay Followed by File Deletion for Evasion

Suspicious Alternate Data Stream Self-Deletion via process_creation

Self-Deletion via Ping Loopback Delay and Del Command

Pivot detection · T1070.004 · 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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