Detection rules › Splunk
Windows Data Destruction Recursive Exec Files Deletion
The following analytic identifies a suspicious process that is recursively deleting executable files on a compromised host. It leverages Sysmon Event Codes 23 and 26 to detect this activity by monitoring for a high volume of deletions or overwrites of files with extensions like .exe, .sys, and .dll. This behavior is significant as it is commonly associated with destructive malware such as CaddyWiper, DoubleZero, and SwiftSlicer, which aim to make file recovery impossible. If confirmed malicious, this activity could lead to significant data loss and system instability, severely impacting business operations.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Impact | T1485 Data Destruction |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | 23 | FileDelete (File Delete archived) |
| Sysmon | 26 | FileDeleteDetected (File Delete logged) |
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
search EventCode IN ("23", "26") TargetFilename IN ("*.dll", "*.exe", "*.sys")
Stage 2: search
search span="2m"
Stage 3: stats
stats BY action, dest, dvc, signature, signature_id, user, user_id, vendor_product
Stage 4: where
where count>=100
Stage 5: search
search
Stage 6: search
search
Stage 7: search
search `macro`
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 |
|---|---|---|
EventCode | in |
|
TargetFilename | in |
|
count | ge |
|
span | eq |
|
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.