Event 4896: One or more rows have been deleted from the certificate database.

Adversaries may delete or modify artifacts generated within systems to remove evidence of their presence or hinder defenses. Various artifacts may be created by an adversary or something that can be attributed to an adversary’s actions. Typically these artifacts are used as defensive indicators related to monitored events, such as strings from downloaded files, logs that are generated from user actions, and other data analyzed by defenders. Location, format, and type of artifact (such as command or login history) are often specific to each platform. Removal of these indicators may interfere with event collection, reporting, or other processes used to detect intrusion activity. This may compromise the integrity of security solutions by causing notable events to go unreported. This activity may also impede forensic analysis and incident response, due to lack of sufficient data to determine what occurred.

Adversaries may destroy data and files on specific systems or in large numbers on a network to interrupt availability to systems, services, and network resources. Data destruction is likely to render stored data irrecoverable by forensic techniques through overwriting files or data on local and remote drives.(Citation: Symantec Shamoon 2012)(Citation: FireEye Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Palo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Kaspersky StoneDrill 2017)(Citation: Unit 42 Shamoon3 2018)(Citation: Talos Olympic Destroyer 2018) Common operating system file deletion commands such as <code>del</code> and <code>rm</code> often only remove pointers to files without wiping the contents of the files themselves, making the files recoverable by proper forensic methodology. This behavior is distinct from [Disk Content Wipe](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1561/001) and [Disk Structure Wipe](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1561/002) because individual files are destroyed rather than sections of a storage disk or the disk's logical structure. Adversaries may attempt to overwrite files and directories with randomly generated data to make it irrecoverable.(Citation: Kaspersky StoneDrill 2017)(Citation: Unit 42 Shamoon3 2018) In some cases politically oriented image files have been used to overwrite data.(Citation: FireEye Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Palo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Kaspersky StoneDrill 2017) To maximize impact on the target organization in operations where network-wide availability interruption is the goal, malware designed for destroying data may have worm-like features to propagate across a network by leveraging additional techniques like [Valid Accounts](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1078), [OS Credential Dumping](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1003), and [SMB/Windows Admin Shares](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1021/002).(Citation: Symantec Shamoon 2012)(Citation: FireEye Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Palo Alto Shamoon Nov 2016)(Citation: Kaspersky StoneDrill 2017)(Citation: Talos Olympic Destroyer 2018). In cloud environments, adversaries may leverage access to delete cloud storage objects, machine images, database instances, and other infrastructure crucial to operations to damage an organization or their customers.(Citation: Data Destruction - Threat Post)(Citation: DOJ - Cisco Insider)