GCP Service Account Key Creationedit

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-*
  • 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: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.13.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positivesedit

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 guideedit

## Config

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

Rule queryedit

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

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

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*.CreateServiceAccountKey and
    event.outcome:success