Suspicious GCP Service Account Key Creation for Persistence (via gcp.audit)
- Product
- gcp
- Service
- gcp.audit
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-08-04
- Updated
- 2026-08-28
ATT&CK techniques
Persistence → Priv EscRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
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
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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