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T1578.003 Delete Cloud Instance

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.

An adversary may also Create Cloud Instance and later terminate the instance after achieving their objectives.3

Item Value
ID T1578.003
Sub-techniques T1578.001, T1578.002, T1578.003, T1578.004, T1578.005
Tactics TA0005
Platforms IaaS
Version 1.2
Created 16 June 2020
Last Modified 24 October 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G1004 LAPSUS$ LAPSUS$ has deleted the target’s systems and resources in the cloud to trigger the organization’s incident and crisis response process.5
G1053 Storm-0501 Storm-0501 has conducted mass deletion of cloud data stores and resources from Azure subscriptions.6

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1047 Audit Routinely check user permissions to ensure only the expected users have the capability to delete new instances.
M1018 User Account Management Limit permissions for deleting new instances in accordance with least privilege. Organizations should limit the number of users within the organization with an IAM role that has administrative privileges, strive to reduce all permanent privileged role assignments, and conduct periodic entitlement reviews on IAM users, roles and policies.3

References

  1. Google. (n.d.). Audit Logs. Retrieved June 1, 2020. ↩

  2. Microsoft. (n.d.). View Azure activity logs. Retrieved June 17, 2020. ↩

  3. MSTIC, DART, M365 Defender. (2022, March 24). DEV-0537 Criminal Actor Targeting Organizations for Data Exfiltration and Destruction. Retrieved May 17, 2022. ↩

  4. Microsoft Threat Intelligence. (2025, August 27). Storm-0501’s evolving techniques lead to cloud-based ransomware. Retrieved October 19, 2025. ↩