GCP IAM Service Account Key Deletion

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Identifies the deletion of an Identity and Access Management (IAM) service account key in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Each service account is associated with two sets of public/private RSA key pairs that are used to authenticate. If a key is deleted, the application will no longer be able to access Google Cloud resources using that key. A security best practice is to rotate your service account keys regularly.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-gcp*

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: 102 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.6.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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Service account key deletions may be done by a system or network administrator. Verify whether the user email, resource name, and/or hostname should be making changes in your environment. Key deletions by unfamiliar users or hosts should be investigated. If known behavior is causing false positives, it can be exempted from the rule.

Investigation guide

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Rule query

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event.dataset:gcp.audit and
event.action:google.iam.admin.v*.DeleteServiceAccountKey and
event.outcome:success

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 102 (8.6.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 100 (8.5.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 8 (8.4.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.dataset:(googlecloud.audit or gcp.audit) and
    event.action:google.iam.admin.v*.DeleteServiceAccountKey and
    event.outcome:success
Version 6 (8.1.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 5 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

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