GCP Service Account Creationedit

Identifies when a new service account is created 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 service accounts are not tracked and managed properly, they can present a security risk. An adversary may create a new service account to use during their operations in order to avoid using a standard user account and attempt to evade detection.

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: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.2

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Potential false positivesedit

Service accounts can be created by system administrators. Verify that the behavior was expected. Exceptions can be added to this rule to filter expected behavior.

Investigation guideedit

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

Rule queryedit

event.dataset:(googlecloud.audit or gcp.audit) and
event.action:google.iam.admin.v*.CreateServiceAccount and
event.outcome:success

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

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*.CreateServiceAccount and
    event.outcome:success