Detection rules › Elastic

Windows Event Logs Cleared

Author
Elastic, Anabella Cristaldi
Source
upstream

Identifies attempts to clear Windows event log stores. This is often done by attackers in an attempt to evade detection or destroy forensic evidence on a system.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Defense EvasionT1070 Indicator Removal, T1070.001 Indicator Removal: Clear Windows Event Logs

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Eventlog104The LogFileCleared.Channel log file was cleared.
Eventlog1102The audit log was cleared.

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: kql:query

event.action:("Log clear" or "audit-log-cleared") and winlog.channel:("Security" or "System")

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

FieldKindValues
event.actionin
  • Log clear
  • audit-log-cleared
winlog.channelin
  • Security
  • System

Neighbors

Often fire together

Rules that target events appearing in the same incident timelines. They pattern-match on adjacent steps of the same TTP, so an alert from one is often paired with alerts from these. Useful for triage context and for assembling chained-detection rules.

Share event IDs (chain-detection candidates)

Rules that observe the same Windows event-ID pairs as this one. If you're authoring a multi-stage / sequence rule that spans these events, these are the existing detections that already cover one or both endpoints.