Malicious GCP Service Account Backdoor via serviceAccountTokenCreator Grant

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Priv Esc
- T1098.003Additional Cloud Roles
Defense Evasion
- T1550.001Application Access Token
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1550.001Application Access Token
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a google.iam.admin.v1.SetIAMPolicy admin activity event that grants the roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator role, allowing a principal to mint access tokens for a targeted service account. Adversaries use this binding to backdoor a service account and later impersonate it through GenerateAccessToken, keeping durable privileged access. This matters because the grant converts any controlled identity into a lasting path to the service account privileges.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.003 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious GCP Service Account Impersonation via GenerateAccessToken

Malicious Azure Elevate Access to User Access Administrator

Suspicious Azure Policy Definition or Assignment Modification

Suspicious AWS IAM Role Creation With Cross-Account Trust Policy

Suspicious AWS Role Assumption via Cognito Web Identity

Suspicious MURKY PANDA Mail Permission Grant to Service Principal (via azure)

Malicious Assignment of a Privileged Azure AD Role (via auditlogs)

Suspicious Kubernetes Service Account Token Generation via kubectl

Suspicious browsercore Execution from Anomalous Parent for PRT Cookie (via process_creation)

Malicious GCP Service Account Backdoor via serviceAccountTokenCreator Grant

Pivot detection · T1098.003 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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