Suspicious GCP Service Account Key Creation for Persistence (via gcp.audit)

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

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

What it detects

This rule detects the CreateServiceAccountKey method in GCP audit logs, the persistence technique Red Canary described where a service account creates a new key for itself to survive key-deletion remediation. Because these tokens are not revokable, key creation where the requesting principal matches the target service account is a strong sign of an actor establishing durable access.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098.001 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Credential Addition to Entra Application via Azure Audit Logs

Suspicious IAM Persistence and Privilege Escalation Actions

Suspicious MURKY PANDA Credential Addition to Entra ID Service Principal (via azure)

Suspicious IAM Access Key Creation for Persistence (via cloudtrail)

Suspicious AWS Administrator Policy Attachment via CloudTrail (via aws)

Suspicious AWS Inline Policy Granting Full S3 Access

Malicious Credential Added to an Azure AD Application (via auditlogs)

Suspicious AWS Long-Term Access Key Creation for Persistence via CloudTrail (via aws)

Suspicious Credential Added to Existing Application for OAuth Persistence in Entra ID (via azure auditlogs)

Suspicious GCP Service Account Key Creation for Persistence (via gcp.audit)

Pivot detection · T1098.001 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →