GCP Service Account Key Creation

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Identifies when a new key is created for a service account in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). A service account is a special type of account used by an application or a virtual machine (VM) instance, not a person. Applications use service accounts to make authorized API calls, authorized as either the service account itself, or as G Suite or Cloud Identity users through domain-wide delegation. If private keys are not tracked and managed properly, they can present a security risk. An adversary may create a new key for a service account in order to attempt to abuse the permissions assigned to that account and evade detection.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-6m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Cloud
  • GCP
  • Continuous Monitoring
  • SecOps
  • Identity and Access

Version: 1

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Potential false positives

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Service account keys may be created by system administrators. Verify that the configuration change was expected. Exceptions can be added to this rule to filter expected behavior.

Investigation guide

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The GCP Filebeat module must be enabled to use this rule.

Rule query

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event.dataset:googlecloud.audit and
event.action:google.iam.admin.v*.CreateServiceAccountKey and
event.outcome:success

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM