Platforms / Security resources

MITRE ATT&CK

Enterprise v20 / 15 tactics / 227 techniques / 479 sub-techniques

Impact / T1561

Disk Wipe

Technique / Enterprise ATT&CK

Official MITRE entry

Adversaries may wipe or corrupt raw disk data on specific systems or in large numbers in a network to interrupt availability to system and network resources. With direct write access to a disk, adversaries may attempt to overwrite portions of disk data. Adversaries may opt to wipe arbitrary portions of disk data and/or wipe disk structures like the master boot record (MBR). A complete wipe of all disk sectors may be attempted.

To maximize impact on the target organization in operations where network-wide availability interruption is the goal, malware used for wiping disks may have worm-like features to propagate across a network by leveraging additional techniques like Valid Accounts, OS Credential Dumping, and SMB/Windows Admin Shares.(Citation: Novetta Blockbuster Destructive Malware)

On network devices, adversaries may wipe configuration files and other data from the device using Network Device CLI commands such as erase.(Citation: erase_cmd_cisco)

Sub-techniques

Source references

Source: MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v20, retrieved 2026-10-31. MITRE ATT&CK is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.