Shadow Copies Deletion Using Operating Systems Utilities

Severity: high
Author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Michael Haag, Teymur Kheirkhabarov, Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community, Andreas Hunkeler (@Karneades)
Source: upstream

Shadow Copies deletion using operating systems utilities

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Defense Evasion	`T1070` Indicator Removal
Impact	`T1490` Inhibit System Recovery

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	1	Process creation

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `all of selection1_img`

or:
Image|endswith: '\diskshadow.exe'
Image|endswith: '\powershell.exe'
Image|endswith: '\pwsh.exe'
Image|endswith: '\vssadmin.exe'
Image|endswith: '\wmic.exe'
OriginalFileName: PowerShell.EXE
OriginalFileName: VSSADMIN.EXE
OriginalFileName: diskshadow.exe
OriginalFileName: pwsh.dll
OriginalFileName: wmic.exe

Stage 2: `all of selection1_cli`

CommandLine|contains: delete
CommandLine|contains: shadow

Stage 3: `all of selection2_img`

or:
Image|endswith: '\wbadmin.exe'
OriginalFileName: WBADMIN.EXE

Stage 4: `all of selection2_cli`

CommandLine|contains: catalog
CommandLine|contains: delete
CommandLine|contains: quiet

Stage 5: `all of selection3_img`

or:
Image|endswith: '\vssadmin.exe'
OriginalFileName: VSSADMIN.EXE

Stage 6: `all of selection3_cli`

or:
CommandLine|contains: '/MaxSize='
CommandLine|contains: unbounded
CommandLine|contains: resize
CommandLine|contains: shadowstorage

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.

Field	Kind	Values
`CommandLine`	match	`/MaxSize=` `catalog` `delete` corpus 7 (sigma 7) `quiet` `resize` `shadow` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `shadowstorage` `unbounded`
`Image`	ends_with	`\diskshadow.exe` corpus 3 (sigma 3) `\powershell.exe` corpus 143 (sigma 143) `\pwsh.exe` corpus 140 (sigma 140) `\vssadmin.exe` corpus 5 (sigma 5) `\wbadmin.exe` corpus 6 (sigma 6) `\wmic.exe` corpus 37 (sigma 37)
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`PowerShell.EXE` corpus 64 (sigma 60, splunk 4) `VSSADMIN.EXE` corpus 3 (sigma 3) `WBADMIN.EXE` corpus 6 (sigma 6) `diskshadow.exe` corpus 3 (sigma 3) `pwsh.dll` corpus 72 (sigma 68, splunk 4) `wmic.exe` corpus 33 (sigma 33)

Shadow Copies Deletion Using Operating Systems Utilities

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Event coverage

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: all of selection1_img

Stage 2: all of selection1_cli

Stage 3: all of selection2_img

Stage 4: all of selection2_cli

Stage 5: all of selection3_img