IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [7.16] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

GCP Service Account Creation

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GCP Service Account Creation

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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: 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 positives

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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 guide

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## Config

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

Rule query

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

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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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*.CreateServiceAccount and
event.outcome:success
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