Google Workspace Admin Role Assigned to a User

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Detects when an admin role is assigned to a Google Workspace user. An adversary may assign an admin role to a user in order to elevate the permissions of another user account and persist in their target’s environment.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-google_workspace*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 10 minutes

Searches indices from: now-130m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Cloud
  • Google Workspace
  • Continuous Monitoring
  • SecOps
  • Identity and Access

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.15.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Potential false positives

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Google Workspace admin role assignments may be modified by system administrators. Verify that the configuration change was expected. Exceptions can be added to this rule to filter expected behavior.

Investigation guide

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## Config

The Google Workspace Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or similarly structured data is required to be compatible with this rule.

### Important Information Regarding Google Workspace Event Lag Times
- As per Google's documentation, Google Workspace administrators may observe lag times ranging from minutes up to 3 days between the time of an event's occurrence and the event being visible in the Google Workspace admin/audit logs.
- This rule is configured to run every 10 minutes with a lookback time of 130 minutes.
- To reduce the risk of false negatives, consider reducing the interval that the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Filebeat module polls Google's reporting API for new events.
- By default, `var.interval` is set to 2 hours (2h). Consider changing this interval to a lower value, such as 10 minutes (10m).
- See the following references for further information:
  - https://support.google.com/a/answer/7061566
  - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/7.16/filebeat-module-google_workspace.html

Rule query

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event.dataset:(gsuite.admin or google_workspace.admin) and
event.provider:admin and event.category:iam and
event.action:ASSIGN_ROLE

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 5 (7.15.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only