Renamed Sysinternals Sdelete Execution

Status: test
Severity: high
Log source: category process_creation, product windows
Author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
Source: github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects the use of a renamed SysInternals Sdelete, which is something an administrator shouldn't do (the renaming)

Known false positives

System administrator usage

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Impact	`T1485` Data Destruction

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 1: Process creation

Rule body

title: Renamed Sysinternals Sdelete Execution
id: c1d867fe-8d95-4487-aab4-e53f2d339f90
status: test
description: Detects the use of a renamed SysInternals Sdelete, which is something an administrator shouldn't do (the renaming)
references:
    - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete
    - https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/f339e7da7d05f6057fdfcdd3742bfcf365fee2a9/atomics/T1485/T1485.md
author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
date: 2022-09-06
modified: 2026-06-29
tags:
    - attack.impact
    - attack.t1485
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        OriginalFileName: 'sdelete.exe'
    filter:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\sdelete.exe'
            - '\sdelete64.exe'
            - '\sdelete64a.exe'
    condition: selection and not filter
falsepositives:
    - System administrator usage
level: high

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

selection and not filter

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    OriginalFileName: 'sdelete.exe'

Stage 2: `not filter`

filter:
    Image|endswith:
        - '\sdelete.exe'
        - '\sdelete64.exe'
        - '\sdelete64a.exe'

Exclusions

The rule actively suppresses these predicates.

Field	Kind	Excluded values	Search
`Image`	ends_with	`\sdelete.exe`	`excludes:Image` `field:"Image" value:"\sdelete.exe"`
`Image`	ends_with	`\sdelete64.exe`	`excludes:Image` `field:"Image" value:"\sdelete64.exe"`
`Image`	ends_with	`\sdelete64a.exe`	`excludes:Image` `field:"Image" value:"\sdelete64a.exe"`

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`sdelete.exe` corpus 4 (sigma 2, elastic 1, splunk 1)	`field:"OriginalFileName" kind:eq value:"sdelete.exe"`