Suspicious Security Event Log Clearing Or Export via Wevtutil

ATT&CK techniques

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects wevtutil.exe being used to export or clear the Security event log. In the WithSecure Catching Lazarus Part Two research the actor exports and manipulates the Security log to remove traces of the intrusion. Attackers clear or dump event logs to destroy forensic evidence of their activity.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685.005 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Windows Event Log Clearing via wevtutil (via process_creation)

Malicious USN Change Journal Deletion via Fsutil for Anti-Forensics

Suspicious Windows Event Log Clearing via wevtutil

Suspicious Windows Event Log Cleared via wevtutil during Ransomware Staging (via process_creation)

Suspicious Deletion of Terminal Server Client History via reg by UNC1549

Suspicious Windows Event Log Clearing via process_creation

Malicious Windows Event Log Clearing via wevtutil

Suspicious Event Log Clearing via Renamed Log Utility

Suspicious Event Log Clearing via PowerShell Invoke-Expression

Suspicious Security Event Log Clearing Or Export via Wevtutil

Pivot detection · T1685.005 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →