Modify Cloud Compute Infrastructure: Delete Cloud Instance T1578.003

Tactic: Defense Impairment

An adversary may delete a cloud instance after they have performed malicious activities in an attempt to evade detection and remove evidence of their presence. Deleting an instance or virtual machine can remove valuable forensic artifacts and other evidence of suspicious behavior if the instance is not recoverable.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 2 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 (5 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.

FieldRulesHowSample values
CategoryValue2eq 2Administrative
ResourceProviderValue2eq 2Microsoft.ADHybridHealthService
azure_ad::operation_name_value2eq 2Microsoft.ADHybridHealthService/services/delete
ResourceId1contains 1adfederationservice
_ResourceId1contains 1adfederationservice

Top indicator values (5 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.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
CategoryValueeq
Administrative
27
ResourceProviderValueeq
Microsoft.ADHybridHealthService
26
azure_ad::operation_name_valueeq
Microsoft.ADHybridHealthService/services/delete
22
ResourceIdcontains
adfederationservice
12
_ResourceIdcontains
adfederationservice
14

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.

Platform (all)
Domain (all)

Sigma 1 rule

Kusto 1 rule