Google Workspace admin privilege granted
A Google Workspace administrator privilege or admin role was granted to a user.
What it detects
A Google Workspace administrator privilege or admin role was granted to a user. As with any identity provider, an unexpected admin grant is a strong privilege-escalation / persistence signal and can indicate an attacker entrenching control of the tenant.
MITRE ATT&CK mapping
- T1098Account Manipulation· Persistence
False positives and triage
New administrators are onboarded legitimately. Confirm the grant matches an approved request and that the acting admin is authorized to assign roles; super-admin grants deserve the most scrutiny.
The rule
Declarative YAML read by the detection engine — data, never executed. Confidence 75%. Source: rules/cloud/gws_admin_privilege_granted.yaml, licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
id: cloud.gws.admin_privilege_granted
version: 1.0.0
status: stable
severity: high
confidence: 0.75
platforms: [application]
mitre_techniques: [T1098]
description: |
A Google Workspace administrator privilege or admin role was granted to a user. As with
any identity provider, an unexpected admin grant is a strong privilege-escalation /
persistence signal and can indicate an attacker entrenching control of the tenant.
match:
provider: GoogleWorkspace
event_action_any:
- GRANT_ADMIN_PRIVILEGE
- GRANT_DELEGATED_ADMIN_PRIVILEGE
- ASSIGN_ROLE
- CREATE_ROLE
correlation_keys: [user_name]
false_positive_guidance: |
New administrators are onboarded legitimately. Confirm the grant matches an approved
request and that the acting admin is authorized to assign roles; super-admin grants
deserve the most scrutiny.
Related detections
Run this rule on your own logs — offline
KIROSEC runs this rule and the rest of the library over Windows, Linux, macOS and cloud audit logs on the analyst's own machine. Every alert links to the events that raised it, and nothing leaves the device.