T1485: Data Destruction
Adversaries may destroy data and files on specific systems or in large numbers on a network to interrupt availability to systems, services, and network resources. Data destruction is likely to render stored data irrecoverable by forensic techniques through overwriting files or data on local and remote drives.CitationSymantec Shamoon 2012CitationFireEye Shamoon Nov 2016CitationPalo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017CitationUnit 42 Shamoon3 2018CitationTalos Olympic Destroyer 2018 Common operating system file deletion commands such as del and rm often only remove pointers to files without wiping the contents of the files themselves, making the files recoverable by proper forensic methodology. This behavior is distinct from Disk Content Wipe and Disk Structure Wipe because individual files are destroyed rather than sections of a storage disk or the disk's logical structure.
Adversaries may attempt to overwrite files and directories with randomly generated data to make it irrecoverable.CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017CitationUnit 42 Shamoon3 2018 In some cases politically oriented image files have been used to overwrite data.CitationFireEye Shamoon Nov 2016CitationPalo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017
To maximize impact on the target organization in operations where network-wide availability interruption is the goal, malware designed for destroying data may have worm-like features to propagate across a network by leveraging additional techniques like Valid Accounts, OS Credential Dumping, and SMB/Windows Admin Shares.CitationSymantec Shamoon 2012CitationFireEye Shamoon Nov 2016CitationPalo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017CitationTalos Olympic Destroyer 2018.
In cloud environments, adversaries may leverage access to delete cloud storage objects, machine images, database instances, and other infrastructure crucial to operations to damage an organization or their customers.CitationData Destruction - Threat PostCitationDOJ - Cisco Insider Similarly, they may delete virtual machines from on-prem virtualized environments.
Security context for executives and security teams
T1485: Data Destruction describes Adversaries may destroy data and files on specific systems or in large numbers on a network to interrupt availability to systems, services, and network resources. Data destruction is likely to render stored data irrecoverable by forensic techniques through overwriting files or data on local and remote drives.(Citation: Symantec Shamoon 2012)(Citation: FireEye Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Palo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Kaspersky StoneDrill 2017)(Citation: Unit 42 Shamoon3 2018)(Citation: Talos Olympic Destroye...
Executive priority
T1485: Data Destruction is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate T1485: Data Destruction by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (impact), supported platforms (Containers, ESXi, IaaS, Linux), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
- Cloud control-plane, SaaS audit, and container platform logs
- Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry
Detection direction
- Validate whether T1485: Data Destruction appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Data Destruction
Adversaries may destroy data and files on specific systems or in large numbers on a network to interrupt availability to systems, services, and network resources. Data destruction is likely to render stored data irrecoverable by forensic techniques through overwriting files or data on local and remote drives.CitationSymantec Shamoon 2012CitationFireEye Shamoon Nov 2016CitationPalo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017CitationUnit 42 Shamoon3 2018CitationTalos Olympic Destroyer 2018 Common operating system file deletion commands such as del and rm often only remove pointers to files without wiping the contents of the files themselves, making the files recoverable by proper forensic methodology. This behavior is distinct from Disk Content Wipe and Disk Structure Wipe because individual files are destroyed rather than sections of a storage disk or the disk's logical structure.
Adversaries may attempt to overwrite files and directories with randomly generated data to make it irrecoverable.CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017CitationUnit 42 Shamoon3 2018 In some cases politically oriented image files have been used to overwrite data.CitationFireEye Shamoon Nov 2016CitationPalo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017
To maximize impact on the target organization in operations where network-wide availability interruption is the goal, malware designed for destroying data may have worm-like features to propagate across a network by leveraging additional techniques like Valid Accounts, OS Credential Dumping, and SMB/Windows Admin Shares.CitationSymantec Shamoon 2012CitationFireEye Shamoon Nov 2016CitationPalo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016CitationKaspersky StoneDrill 2017CitationTalos Olympic Destroyer 2018.
In cloud environments, adversaries may leverage access to delete cloud storage objects, machine images, database instances, and other infrastructure crucial to operations to damage an organization or their customers.CitationData Destruction - Threat PostCitationDOJ - Cisco Insider Similarly, they may delete virtual machines from on-prem virtualized environments.
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.
All related ATT&CK context
No relationships are available in the current normalized data for this object.
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.
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.
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