Suspicious Shell History Clearing or Disabling (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1070.003Clear Command History
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects commands that clear or disable shell history, such as truncating bash_history, unsetting HISTFILE or setting HISTFILESIZE to zero, an anti-forensic step used to hide interactive activity on a Linux host. Shell history tampering is an indicator-removal technique tracked in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report. Detecting it surfaces an operator covering hands-on-keyboard tracks.

Reporting behind it

Related detections8 linkedT1070.003 — drag to rearrange

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Windows Registry RunMRU Key Deletion

Windows: Detect reg.exe Deletion of RunMRU Registry Key

Windows PowerShell Command History Disable via Remove-Module psreadline

Windows PowerShell Clears Console History via Clear-History

Cisco Network OS Log and Archive Clearing via “clear logging” Commands

Suspicious Shell History Clearing or Disabling (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1070.003 · 8 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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