Google project IAM binding service account has token creator or account user role

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Metadata

Id: 617ef6ff-711e-4bd7-94ae-e965911b1b40

Cloud Provider: GCP

Platform: Terraform

Severity: High

Category: Access Control

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Description

This check identifies if a Google Project IAM binding grants serviceAccountTokenCreator or serviceAccountUser roles, which provide excessive privileges to service accounts. These roles allow the specified members to impersonate service accounts, creating security risks through privilege escalation paths and potential lateral movement across your GCP environment.

Members with the serviceAccountTokenCreator role can create OAuth2 access tokens, while those with serviceAccountUser role can use service accounts for their operations. To remediate this issue, assign more restrictive roles that follow the principle of least privilege instead, as shown in the following example:

resource "google_project_iam_binding" "secure_example" {
  project = "your-project-id"
  role    = "roles/editor"

  members = [
    "user:jane@example.com",
  ]
}

Compliant Code Examples

resource "google_project_iam_binding" "negative1" {
  project = "your-project-id"
  role    = "roles/editor"

  members = [
    "user:jane@example.com",
  ]
}

Non-Compliant Code Examples

resource "google_project_iam_binding" "positive1" {
  project = "your-project-id"
  role    = "roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator"

  members = [
    "user:jane@example.com",
    "serviceAccount:my-other-app@appspot.gserviceacccount.com"
  ]
}

resource "google_project_iam_binding" "positive2" {
  project = "your-project-id"
  role    = "roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator"
  member = "serviceAccount:my-other-app@appspot.gserviceacccount.com"
}

resource "google_project_iam_binding" "positive3" {
  project = "your-project-id"
  role    = "roles/iam.serviceAccountUser"

  members = [
    "user:jane@example.com",
    "serviceAccount:my-other-app@appspot.gserviceacccount.com"
  ]
}

resource "google_project_iam_binding" "positive4" {
  project = "your-project-id"
  role    = "roles/iam.serviceAccountUser"
  member = "serviceAccount:my-other-app@appspot.gserviceacccount.com"
}