administrator may execute this app to manage disk

Techniques

T1070.004

Sample rules

Clear Unallocated Sector Using Cipher App

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1070.004

Description

The following analytic detects the execution of cipher.exe with the /w flag to clear unallocated sectors on a disk. It leverages data from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents, focusing on process names, command-line arguments, and parent processes. This activity is significant because it is a technique used by ransomware to prevent forensic recovery of deleted files. If confirmed malicious, this action could hinder incident response efforts by making it impossible to recover critical data, thereby complicating the investigation and remediation process.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Processes
  WHERE Processes.process_name = "cipher.exe" Processes.process = "*/w:*"
  BY Processes.action Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name
     Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_exec Processes.parent_process_guid
     Processes.parent_process_id Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process_path
     Processes.process Processes.process_exec Processes.process_guid
     Processes.process_hash Processes.process_id Processes.process_integrity_level
     Processes.process_name Processes.process_path Processes.user
     Processes.user_id Processes.vendor_product

| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`

| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`

| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`

| `clear_unallocated_sector_using_cipher_app_filter`