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 [8.5] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Google Workspace Admin Role Assigned to a User

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Google Workspace Admin Role Assigned to a User

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Assigning the administrative role to a user will grant them access to the Google Admin console and grant them administrator privileges which allow them to access and manage various resources and applications. An adversary may create a new administrator account for persistence or apply the admin role to an existing user to carry out further intrusion efforts. Users with super-admin privileges can bypass single-sign on if enabled in Google Workspace.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-google_workspace*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

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
  • Persistence

Version: 101 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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Google Workspace admin role assignments may be modified by system administrators. Verify that the configuration change was expected. Exceptions can be added to this rule to filter expected behavior.

Investigation guide

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### 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/current/filebeat-module-google_workspace.html

Rule query

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event.dataset:"google_workspace.admin" and event.category:"iam" and
event.action:"ASSIGN_ROLE" and
google_workspace.event.type:"DELEGATED_ADMIN_SETTINGS" and
google_workspace.admin.role.name : *_ADMIN_ROLE

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 101 (8.5.0 release)

  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.dataset:google_workspace.admin and event.provider:admin and
event.category:iam and event.action:ASSIGN_ROLE
Version 14 (8.4.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 12 (8.3.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 10 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 6 (8.0.0 release)

  • Updated query, changed from:

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