Indicator Removal: Clear Command History T1070.003
Tactic: Stealth
In addition to clearing system logs, an adversary may clear the command history of a compromised account to conceal the actions undertaken during an intrusion. Various command interpreters keep track of the commands users type in their terminal so that users can retrace what they've done.
Events covered
8 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 14 | RegistryEvent (Key and Value Rename) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 23 | FileDelete (File Delete archived) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 26 | FileDeleteDetected (File Delete logged) |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| ESF | exec | Process Execution (Notify) |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4103 | Payload Context: ContextInfo User Data: UserData. |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4104 | Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal). |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 15 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (18 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (104 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (9 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 9 rules
- Cisco Clear Logs
- Clear PowerShell History - PowerShell
- Clear PowerShell History - PowerShell Module
- Clearing Windows Console History
- Disable Powershell Command History
- Linux Command History Tampering
- RunMRU Registry Key Deletion
- RunMRU Registry Key Deletion - Registry
- Suspicious IO.FileStream
Elastic 4 rules
- Clearing Windows Console History
- Shell Command-Line History Deletion Detected via Defend for Containers
- Shell History Clearing via Environment Variables
- Tampering of Shell Command-Line History