Google Workspace API Access Granted via Domain-Wide Delegation of Authorityedit

Detects when a domain-wide delegation of authority is granted to a service account. Domain-wide delegation can be configured to grant third-party and internal applications to access the data of Google Workspace users. An adversary may configure domain-wide delegation to maintain access to their target’s data.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-google_workspace*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 10 minutes

Searches indices from: now-130m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Cloud
  • Google Workspace
  • Continuous Monitoring
  • SecOps
  • Identity and Access

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.15.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positivesedit

Domain-wide delegation of authority may be granted to service accounts by system administrators. Verify that the configuration change was expected. Exceptions can be added to this rule to filter expected behavior.

Investigation guideedit

## Config

The Google Workspace Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or similarly structured data is required to be compatible with this rule.

### Important Information Regarding Google Workspace Event Lag Times
- As per Google's documentation, Google Workspace administrators may observe lag times ranging from minutes up to 3 days between the time of an event's occurrence and the event being visible in the Google Workspace admin/audit logs.
- This rule is configured to run every 10 minutes with a lookback time of 130 minutes.
- To reduce the risk of false negatives, consider reducing the interval that the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Filebeat module polls Google's reporting API for new events.
- By default, `var.interval` is set to 2 hours (2h). Consider changing this interval to a lower value, such as 10 minutes (10m).
- See the following references for further information:
  - https://support.google.com/a/answer/7061566
  - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/7.16/filebeat-module-google_workspace.html

Rule queryedit

event.dataset:(gsuite.admin or google_workspace.admin) and
event.provider:admin and event.category:iam and
event.action:AUTHORIZE_API_CLIENT_ACCESS

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 5 (7.15.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only