// question
An attacker obtained elevated rights on a Windows system and ran a deletion command that attempted to remove various backup file types across the C: drive, generating numerous “access denied” errors. What was the full command line used?
Reference KQL answer and model-by-model comparison.
6b1dbaf6-cc8a-4ea6-891f-6058569653bf
question id
4/23
models correct
1
valid answer
17%
success rate
// reference answer
Human-validated correct answer for this question.
del /s /f /q c:\*.VHD c:\*.bac c:\*.bak c:\*.wbcat c:\*.bkf c:\Backup*.* c:\backup*.* c:\*.set c:\*.win c:\*.dsk
// model comparison
| Model | Answer | KQL query | Status | Tries | Time | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gemini-2.5-flash-preview-04-17 | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0638 |
| gpt-35-turbo | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0112 |
| gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09 | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.2401 |
| gpt-4.1 | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0413 |
| gpt-4.1-finetuned | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0364 |
| gpt-4.1-mini | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0608 |
| gpt-4.1-nano | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0016 |
| gpt-4o | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0459 |
| gpt-5-high | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.3115 |
| gpt-5-mini-high | "cmd.exe" /c del /s /f /q c:\*.VHD c:\*.bac c:\*.bak c:\*.wbcat c:\*.bkf c:\Backup*.* c:\backup*.* c:\*.set c:\*.win c:\*.dsk | (DeviceProcessEvents | where ProcessCommandLine has_any ("del ", "del /", "remove-item", "rm ", "forfiles ", "erase ", "rd ", "rmdir ", "cmd.exe /c del" , "powershell -command" , "powershell -c" , "vssadmin delete", "wbadmin delete")
| where ProcessCommandLine matches regex @"(?i)C:\\\\[^\s]*\.(bak|bkf|old|zip|tar|rar|vhdx?|iso|log|pst|ost)" or ProcessCommandLine has "C:\\*"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, AccountName, InitiatingProcessAccountName, ProcessId, ProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, ActionType, AdditionalFields
)
| union (
DeviceEvents
| where ActionType has_any ("FileDelete", "DeleteFile", "Delete", "Create", "Write") or FileName has_any (".bak", ".bkf", ".old", ".zip", ".tar", ".rar", ".vhd", ".vhdx", ".pst", ".ost")
| where FolderPath has_cs "C:\\" or FileName contains_cs "C:\\"
| where tostring(AdditionalFields) contains_cs "access denied" or tostring(AdditionalFields) contains_cs "access was denied" or tostring(AdditionalFields) contains_cs "Access is denied"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, AccountName, InitiatingProcessAccountName, ProcessId=InitiatingProcessId, ProcessCommandLine=InitiatingProcessCommandLine, InitiatingProcessFileName, ActionType, AdditionalFields
)
| summarize count() by ProcessCommandLine, DeviceName, InitiatingProcessFileName, AccountName, InitiatingProcessAccountName
| where isnotempty(ProcessCommandLine)
| order by count_ desc
| top 20 by count_
| project ProcessCommandLine, count_, DeviceName, InitiatingProcessFileName, AccountName, InitiatingProcessAccountName | pass | 1 | 16.14s | 0.0043 |
| gpt-5-mini-low | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0208 |
| gpt-5-mini-medium | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0193 |
| gpt-5-nano-high | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0107 |
| gpt-5-nano-medium | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0094 |
| grok-3-beta | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0958 |
| grok-3-mini-beta | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0080 |
| o1-high | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.9356 |
| o1-low | "cmd.exe" /c del /s /f /q c:\*.VHD c:\*.bac c:\*.bak c:\*.wbcat c:\*.bkf c:\Backup*.* c:\backup*.* c:\*.set c:\*.win c:\*.dsk | DeviceProcessEvents
| where ActionType == "ProcessCreated"
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any ("del", "erase", "Remove-Item", "rm")
| where ProcessCommandLine contains "C:"
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any (".bak", ".bkf", ".bkp")
| project TimeGenerated,
DeviceName,
AccountDomain,
AccountName,
FullCommandLine = ProcessCommandLine
| order by TimeGenerated desc | pass | 3 | 93.54s | 0.6860 |
| o3-high | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.1106 |
| o3-mini-high | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0469 |
| o3-mini-low | no answer | no query generated | fail | 5 | 0.00s | 0.0539 |
| o4-mini-high | "cmd.exe" /c del /s /f /q c:\*.VHD c:\*.bac c:\*.bak c:\*.wbcat c:\*.bkf c:\Backup*.* c:\backup*.* c:\*.set c:\*.win c:\*.dsk | DeviceProcessEvents
| where FileName in ("cmd.exe", "erase.exe")
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any ("del", "erase")
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any (".bak", ".bkf", ".zip", ".rar")
| where ProcessCommandLine contains "C:\\"
| project TimeGenerated, DeviceName, AccountName = InitiatingProcessAccountName, ProcessCommandLine
| sort by TimeGenerated desc | pass | 4 | 113.40s | 0.0413 |
| o4-mini-low | "cmd.exe" /c del /s /f /q c:\*.VHD c:\*.bac c:\*.bak c:\*.wbcat c:\*.bkf c:\Backup*.* c:\backup*.* c:\*.set c:\*.win c:\*.dsk | DeviceProcessEvents
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any ("del", "erase")
| where ProcessCommandLine has_any (".bak", ".bkf", ".vhd")
| summarize Occurrences = count() by FullCommandLine = ProcessCommandLine
| top 1 by Occurrences desc
| project FullCommandLine | pass | 2 | 86.60s | 0.0247 |