Suspicious AWS S3 Object Deletion Activity

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
aws
Service
cloudtrail
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-11-02
Updated
2026-11-02

ATT&CK techniques

Impact
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

What it detects

This rule detects deletion of S3 objects through the DeleteObject API. It corresponds to the impact stage of an S3 compromise where data is destroyed after exfiltration. Detecting object deletions helps surface data-destruction against cloud storage.

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Malicious S3 Bucket Deletion During Bling Libra Extortion
Malicious DYNOWIPER PowerShell Loader Execution (via ps_script)
Suspicious S3 Lifecycle Policy Set for Rapid Object Deletion
Malicious PathWiper Loader Script Execution from Windows Temp via WScript
Suspicious Free Space Wipe via cipher.exe
Suspicious sha256sum.exe Execution from Windows Temp Directory
Suspicious AWS S3 Object Deletion Activity
Pivot detection · T1485 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.