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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security [8.19] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

GKE Forbidden Creation Request

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GKE Forbidden Creation Request

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Detects denied GKE API create requests from non-control-plane identities. Failed creates can indicate RBAC probing, stolen credentials with insufficient privileges, or attempts to deploy unauthorized workloads.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • logs-gcp.audit-*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5m

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Domain: Cloud
  • Domain: Kubernetes
  • Data Source: GCP
  • Data Source: Google Cloud Platform
  • Use Case: Threat Detection
  • Tactic: Execution
  • Resources: Investigation Guide

Version: 1

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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Triage and analysis

Investigating GKE Forbidden Creation Request

Denied creates outside GKE system identities often reflect reconnaissance or misconfigured automation with stolen tokens.

Investigation steps

  • Review client.user.email, event.action, gcp.audit.resource_name, source.ip, user_agent.original, and gcp.audit.status.message.
  • Determine whether the identity should exist and whether the target resource is sensitive (pods, secrets, RBAC).
  • Correlate with later successful creates or RBAC changes from the same actor.

False positives

  • New deployments where RoleBindings lag the workload; exclude approved CI service accounts after review.

Setup

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The GCP Fleet integration with GKE audit logs enabled is required to be compatible with this rule.

Rule query

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data_stream.dataset:gcp.audit and service.name:k8s.io and event.outcome:failure and
event.action:*.create and
gcp.audit.status.message:(*forbidden* or *Unauthorized*) and
not client.user.email:(
  "system:apiserver" or system\:kube-* or "system:cloud-controller-manager" or system\:gke-* or
  system\:node\:* or system\:serviceaccount\:kube-system\:* or system\:serviceaccount\:gke-managed* or
  "kubelet-bootstrap" or "kubelet-nodepool-bootstrap" or "gcp:kube-bootstrap"
) and
not user_agent.original:(*kubernetes/$Format)

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

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