Adversaries may clear Windows Event Logs to hide the activity of an intrusion. Windows Event Logs are a record of a computer's alerts and notifications. There are three system-defined sources of events: System, Application, and Security, with five event types: Error, Warning, Information, Success Audit, and Failure Audit.

With administrator privileges, the event logs can be cleared with the following utility commands:

• wevtutil cl system
• wevtutil cl application
• wevtutil cl security

These logs may also be cleared through other mechanisms, such as the event viewer GUI or PowerShell. For example, adversaries may use the PowerShell command Remove-EventLog -LogName Security to delete the Security EventLog and after reboot, disable future logging. Note: events may still be generated and logged in the .evtx file between the time the command is run and the reboot.^[1]

Adversaries may also attempt to clear logs by directly deleting the stored log files within C:\Windows\System32\winevt\logs\.

References

1. Heiligenstein, L. (n.d.). REP-25: Disable Windows Event Logging. Retrieved April 7, 2022.

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