Classification:

attack

Tactic:

TA0004-privilege-escalation

Technique:

T1078-valid-accounts

VIEW RULE IN DATADOG VIEW SIGNALS

Goal

Detect when a Google Cloud service account (@usr.id:*.iam.gserviceaccount.com) exhibits access denied behavior that deviates from normal.

Strategy

Inspect the Google Cloud service account (@usr.id:*.iam.gserviceaccount.com) for errors (@data.protoPayload.status.code:7) caused by denied permissions (@evt.outcome). The anomaly detection will baseline each service account and then generate a security signal when a service account deviates from their baseline.

Note: By default, Google Cloud only logs PERMISSION_DENIED errors for write operations (Admin Activity audit logs). Read operations are not logged because Data Access audit logs are disabled by default. You must enable Data Access audit logs for this rule to have full visibility over access denied activity from service accounts.

Triage and response

Investigate the logs and determine whether the Google Cloud service account {{@usr.id}} is compromised.