Data Destruction T1485
Adversaries may destroy data and files on specific systems or in large numbers on a network to interrupt availability to systems, services, and network resources. Data destruction is likely to render stored data irrecoverable by forensic techniques through overwriting files or data on local and remote drives. Common operating system file deletion commands such as del and rm often only remove pointers to files without wiping the contents of the files themselves, making the files recoverable by proper forensic methodology. This behavior is distinct from Disk Content Wipe and Disk Structure Wipe because individual files are destroyed rather than sections of a storage disk or the disk's logical structure.
Events covered
14 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 3 | Network connection |
| Sysmon | Event ID 5 | Process terminated |
| Sysmon | Event ID 11 | FileCreate |
| Sysmon | Event ID 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 22 | DNSEvent (DNS query) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 23 | FileDelete (File Delete archived) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 26 | FileDeleteDetected (File Delete logged) |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4656 | A handle to an object was requested. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4658 | The handle to an object was closed. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4663 | An attempt was made to access an object. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4689 | A process has exited. |
| Defender-DeviceProcessEvents | any | Process activity (any) |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 28 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (38 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (171 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (66 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 6 rules
- Deleted Data Overwritten Via Cipher.EXE
- Fsutil Suspicious Invocation
- Potential BlackByte Ransomware Activity
- Potential File Overwrite Via Sysinternals SDelete
- Potential Secure Deletion with SDelete
- Renamed Sysinternals Sdelete Execution
Elastic 6 rules
- Backup Deletion with Wbadmin
- Potential Ransomware Behavior - Note Files by System
- Potential Ransomware Note File Dropped via SMB
- Potential System Tampering via File Modification
- Suspicious File Renamed via SMB
- Third-party Backup Files Deleted via Unexpected Process
Splunk 11 rules
- Cipher.exe Execution (Sysmon)
- Cipher.exe Execution (Windows Event Log)
- Common Ransomware Extensions
- Common Ransomware Notes
- Detect DNS Query to Decommissioned S3 Bucket
- Excessive File Deletion In WinDefender Folder
- Sdelete Application Execution
- Windows Data Destruction Recursive Exec Files Deletion
- Windows Disable Memory Crash Dump
- Windows File Without Extension In Critical Folder
- Windows High File Deletion Frequency