T1489: Service Stop
Adversaries may stop or disable services on a system to render those services unavailable to legitimate users. Stopping critical services or processes can inhibit or stop response to an incident or aid in the adversary's overall objectives to cause damage to the environment.[1][2]
Adversaries may accomplish this by disabling individual services of high importance to an organization, such as MSExchangeIS, which will make Exchange content inaccessible.[2] In some cases, adversaries may stop or disable many or all services to render systems unusable.[1] Services or processes may not allow for modification of their data stores while running. Adversaries may stop services or processes in order to conduct Data Destruction or Data Encrypted for Impact on the data stores of services like Exchange and SQL Server, or on virtual machines hosted on ESXi infrastructure.[3][4]
Threat actors may also disable or stop service in cloud environments. For example, by leveraging the `DisableAPIServiceAccess` API in AWS, a threat actor may prevent the service from creating service-linked roles on new accounts in the AWS Organization.[5][6]
Analyst context for executives and security teams
Service Stop is an impact technique where an adversary stops or disables system, application, virtualization, or cloud services so legitimate users and responders lose access to critical functions. Its business significance is that it can turn a security incident into an operational outage: email stores, databases, hosted virtual machines, security tools, or cloud service integrations may become unavailable or easier to damage/encrypt.
Executive priority
Treat this as an operational resilience and incident readiness issue, not only an endpoint alerting problem. Leaders should ask which services are mission-critical, who can stop them, whether privileged actions are monitored across Windows, Linux, macOS, ESXi, and IaaS, and how the organization communicates if primary systems are degraded. The related ATT&CK mitigations point to practical priorities: least-privilege account management, restrictive permissions on sensitive files/directories and registry areas where applicable, segmentation around critical systems, and out-of-band communications for incident continuity.
Technical view
ATT&CK lists this technique under Impact and covers ESXi, IaaS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. SOC and IR teams should validate visibility into service stop/disable events and administrative API activity across these platforms, especially around high-value services such as Exchange, SQL Server, security tooling, and ESXi-hosted virtual machines. Cloud teams should specifically review logging and alerting for service-access changes such as AWS Organizations DisableAPIServiceAccess where relevant. No official MITRE detection text is provided, but the relationship to DET0021 indicates behavioral detection for service stopping across platforms is the intended detection strategy direction.
Likely telemetry
- Operating system service control logs and process execution records
- Windows service control manager and relevant registry change events
- Linux/macOS service manager activity and privileged command execution logs
- ESXi or virtualization management logs for service or VM-related administrative actions
- Cloud control-plane audit logs for service access disablement or organization-level API changes
Detection direction
- Baseline legitimate administrative service stops so alerts can focus on unusual timing, unusual operators, bulk service stoppage, or stops affecting critical business services.
- Correlate service stop events with impact behaviors such as data destruction or data encrypted for impact, since ATT&CK notes service stoppage may precede modification, destruction, or encryption of service data stores.
- Prioritize detections for services tied to email, databases, security controls, virtualization, and cloud organization controls, because these can materially affect response and recovery.
- Tune for false positives from patching, deployments, backup windows, and planned maintenance; require change-ticket or automation context where available.
- Validate cross-platform coverage. A Windows-only rule set will miss the ESXi, IaaS, Linux, and macOS scope supplied for this technique.
Mitigation priorities
- Enforce user account management and least privilege so only authorized administrative roles can stop or disable critical services.
- Restrict file, directory, and registry permissions where applicable to reduce unauthorized tampering with service configuration or supporting data stores.
- Segment critical systems and management planes to limit which accounts and networks can administer high-value services, ESXi infrastructure, and cloud control planes.
- Maintain secure out-of-band communications so incident coordination can continue if primary services are stopped or degraded.
- Document and rehearse recovery procedures for critical services, including ownership, restart dependencies, and escalation paths.
Analyst notes and limits
The relationship context links this technique to multiple threat groups and software families, including destructive malware and ransomware examples, but this take does not infer current activity or local exposure. For defensive planning, the most useful local exercise is to map critical services to owners, privileged roles, telemetry sources, and recovery dependencies.
MITRE provides no official detection text for this object. Specific event IDs, commands, API names beyond the supplied AWS example, and vendor-specific controls are intentionally not asserted. Local platform configuration, logging depth, and change-management data are required to determine actual coverage.
Service Stop
Adversaries may stop or disable services on a system to render those services unavailable to legitimate users. Stopping critical services or processes can inhibit or stop response to an incident or aid in the adversary's overall objectives to cause damage to the environment.[1][2]
Adversaries may accomplish this by disabling individual services of high importance to an organization, such as MSExchangeIS, which will make Exchange content inaccessible.[2] In some cases, adversaries may stop or disable many or all services to render systems unusable.[1] Services or processes may not allow for modification of their data stores while running. Adversaries may stop services or processes in order to conduct Data Destruction or Data Encrypted for Impact on the data stores of services like Exchange and SQL Server, or on virtual machines hosted on ESXi infrastructure.[3][4]
Threat actors may also disable or stop service in cloud environments. For example, by leveraging the `DisableAPIServiceAccess` API in AWS, a threat actor may prevent the service from creating service-linked roles on new accounts in the AWS Organization.[5][6]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Groups, software, and campaigns
G1051: Medusa Group
Medusa Group has been active since at least 2021 and was initially operated as a closed ransomware group before evolving into a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation. Some reporting indicates that certain attacks may still be conducted directly by the ransomware’s core developers. Public sources have also referred to the group as “Spearwing” or “Medusa Actors.” [1] [2] Medusa Group employs living-off-the-land techniques, frequently leveraging publicly available tools and common remote management software to conduct operations. The group engages in double extortion tactics, exfiltrating data prior to encryption and threatening to publish stolen information if ransom demands are not met. [3] For initial access, Medusa Group has exploited publicly known vulnerabilities, conducted phishing campaigns, and used credentials or access purchased from Initial Access Brokers (IABs). The group is opportunistic and has targeted a wide range of sectors globally. [4]
G0094: Kimsuky
Kimsuky is a Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-based cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2012. The group initially targeted South Korean government agencies, think tanks, and subject-matter experts in various fields. Its operations expanded to include the United Nations and organizations in the government, education, business services, and manufacturing sectors across the United States, Japan, Russia, and Europe. Kimsuky has focused collection on foreign policy and national security issues tied to the Korean Peninsula, nuclear policy, and sanctions. Kimsuky operations have overlapped with those of other North Korean state-sponsored cyber espionage actors as a result of ad hoc collaborations or other limited resource sharing.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Kimsuky was assessed to be responsible for the 2014 Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise; other notable campaigns include Operation STOLEN PENCIL (2018), Operation Kabar Cobra (2019), and Operation Smoke Screen (2019).[7][8][9] In 2023, Kimsuky was observed using commercial large language models (LLMs) to assist with vulnerability research, scripting, social engineering and reconnaissance.[10]
DPRK threat actor cluster boundaries overlap in open source reporting, with some security researchers consolidating all attributed North Korean state-sponsored cyber activity under Lazarus Group, rather than tracking operationally distinct subgroups.
G0032: Lazarus Group
Lazarus Group is a North Korean state-sponsored cyber threat group attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). [1] [2] Lazarus Group has been active since at least 2009 and is reportedly responsible for the November 2014 destructive wiper attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, identified by Novetta as part of Operation Blockbuster. Malware used by Lazarus Group correlates to other reported campaigns, including Operation Flame, Operation 1Mission, Operation Troy, DarkSeoul, and Ten Days of Rain.[3]
North Korea’s cyber operations have shown a consistent pattern of adaptation, forming and reorganizing units as national priorities shift. These units frequently share personnel, infrastructure, malware, and tradecraft, making it difficult to attribute specific operations with high confidence. Public reporting often uses “Lazarus Group” as an umbrella term for multiple North Korean cyber operators conducting espionage, destructive attacks, and financially motivated campaigns.[4][5][6]
G0034: Sandworm Team
Sandworm Team is a destructive threat group that has been attributed to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Main Center for Special Technologies (GTsST) military unit 74455.[1][2] This group has been active since at least 2009.[3][4][5][6]
In October 2020, the US indicted six GRU Unit 74455 officers associated with Sandworm Team for the following cyber operations: the 2015 and 2016 attacks against Ukrainian electrical companies and government organizations, the 2017 worldwide NotPetya attack, targeting of the 2017 French presidential campaign, the 2018 Olympic Destroyer attack against the Winter Olympic Games, the 2018 operation against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and attacks against the country of Georgia in 2018 and 2019.[1][2] Some of these were conducted with the assistance of GRU Unit 26165, which is also referred to as APT28.[7]
G1004: LAPSUS$
LAPSUS$ is cyber criminal threat group that has been active since at least mid-2021. LAPSUS$ specializes in large-scale social engineering and extortion operations, including destructive attacks without the use of ransomware. The group has targeted organizations globally, including in the government, manufacturing, higher education, energy, healthcare, technology, telecommunications, and media sectors.[1][2][3]
G0102: Wizard Spider
Wizard Spider is a Russia-based financially motivated threat group originally known for the creation and deployment of TrickBot since at least 2016. Wizard Spider possesses a diverse arsenal of tools and has conducted ransomware campaigns against a variety of organizations, ranging from major corporations to hospitals.[1][2][3]
G0119: Indrik Spider
Indrik Spider is a Russia-based cybercriminal group that has been active since at least 2014. Indrik Spider initially started with the Dridex banking Trojan, and then by 2017 they began running ransomware operations using BitPaymer, WastedLocker, and Hades ransomware. Following U.S. sanctions and an indictment in 2019, Indrik Spider changed their tactics and diversified their toolset.[1][2][3]
S0611: Clop
Clop is a ransomware family that was first observed in February 2019 and has been used against retail, transportation and logistics, education, manufacturing, engineering, automotive, energy, financial, aerospace, telecommunications, professional and legal services, healthcare, and high tech industries. Clop is a variant of the CryptoMix ransomware.[1][2][3]
S0582: LookBack
S1247: Embargo
Embargo is a ransomware variant written in Rust that has been active since at least May 2024.[1][2] Embargo ransomware operations are associated with “double extortion” ransomware activity, where data is exfiltrated from victim environments prior to encryption, with threats to publish files if a ransom is not paid.[1][2] Embargo ransomware has been known to be delivered through a loader known as MDeployer which also leverages a malware component known as MS4Killer that facilitates termination of processes operating on the victim hosts.[2] Embargo is also reportedly a Ransomware as a Service (RaaS).[2]
S0688: Meteor
Meteor is a wiper that was used against Iranian government organizations, including Iranian Railways, the Ministry of Roads, and Urban Development systems, in July 2021. Meteor is likely a newer version of similar wipers called Stardust and Comet that were reportedly used by a group called "Indra" since at least 2019 against private companies in Syria.[1]
S1211: Hannotog
Hannotog is a type of backdoor malware uniquely assoicated with Lotus Blossom operations since at least 2022.[1]
S0366: WannaCry
S9014: PHASEJAM
S1073: Royal
Royal is ransomware that first appeared in early 2022; a version that also targets ESXi servers was later observed in February 2023. Royal employs partial encryption and multiple threads to evade detection and speed encryption. Royal has been used in attacks against multiple industries worldwide--including critical infrastructure. Security researchers have identified similarities in the encryption routines and TTPs used in Royal and Conti attacks and noted a possible connection between their operators.[1][2][3][4][5]
S0659: Diavol
Diavol is a ransomware variant first observed in June 2021 that is capable of prioritizing file types to encrypt based on a pre-configured list of extensions defined by the attacker. The Diavol Ransomware-as-a Service (RaaS) program is managed by Wizard Spider and it has been observed being deployed by Bazar.[1][2][3][4]
S0640: Avaddon
S0365: Olympic Destroyer
Olympic Destroyer is malware that was used by Sandworm Team against the 2018 Winter Olympics, held in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The main purpose of the malware was to render infected computer systems inoperable. The malware leverages various native Windows utilities and API calls to carry out its destructive tasks. Olympic Destroyer has worm-like features to spread itself across a computer network in order to maximize its destructive impact.[1][2]
S1096: Cheerscrypt
Cheerscrypt is a ransomware that was developed by Cinnamon Tempest and has been used in attacks against ESXi and Windows environments since at least 2022. Cheerscrypt was derived from the leaked Babuk source code and has infrastructure overlaps with deployments of Night Sky ransomware, which was also derived from Babuk.[1][2]
All related ATT&CK context
Mitigation direction
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.4 | Current bundle | fedfb97b0be3… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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[1]
Talos Olympic Destroyer 2018
Mercer, W. and Rascagneres, P. (2018, February 12). Olympic Destroyer Takes Aim At Winter Olympics. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
Open source URL -
[2]
Novetta Blockbuster
Novetta Threat Research Group. (2016, February 24). Operation Blockbuster: Unraveling the Long Thread of the Sony Attack. Retrieved February 25, 2016.
Open source URL -
[3]
SecureWorks WannaCry Analysis
Counter Threat Unit Research Team. (2017, May 18). WCry Ransomware Analysis. Retrieved March 26, 2019.
Open source URL -
[4]
Crowdstrike Hypervisor Jackpotting Pt 2 2021
Michael Dawson. (2021, August 30). Hypervisor Jackpotting, Part 2: eCrime Actors Increase Targeting of ESXi Servers with Ransomware. Retrieved March 26, 2025.
Open source URL -
[5]
Datadog Security Labs Cloud Persistence 2025
Martin McCloskey. (2025, May 13). Tales from the cloud trenches: The Attacker doth persist too much, methinks. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
Open source URL -
[6]
AWS DisableAWSServiceAccess
AWS. (n.d.). DisableAWSServiceAccess. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
Open source URL -
[7]
mitre-attack T1489Open source URL
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