GKE Unusual Service Account Secret Access via New User Agent

Last updated 2 days ago on 2026-07-31

Created 16 days ago on 2026-07-17

About

Detects the first successful GKE secrets.get by a pod service account from a previously unseen combination of service-account identity, user agent, and source IP. Controllers routinely read secrets with a stable client fingerprint; a new user agent or source for that service account could indicate a stolen token used outside the workload (for example curl, a custom script, or kubectl from an unexpected host).

Tags

Domain: CloudDomain: KubernetesData Source: GCPData Source: Google Cloud PlatformUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Credential AccessLanguage: kuery

Severity

low

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Credential Access (TA0006)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Unsecured Credentials (T1552)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

Controller upgrades, sidecar replacements, or client library version bumps change user agents and can produce a first-seen alert for known service accounts. Confirm the new client is expected before treating as compromise. Newly deployed operators or workloads that change egress IP will alert once while the history window learns their client fingerprint.

License

Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type: New Terms Rule
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: logs-gcp.audit-*
Related Integrations: gcp(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗data_stream.dataset:gcp.audit and service.name:k8s.io and event.outcome:success and
event.action:"io.k8s.core.v1.secrets.get" and
client.user.email:system\:serviceaccount\:* and
user_agent.original:(* and not *kubernetes/$Format*) and
source.ip:(* and not (127.0.0.1 or "::1"))

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect GKE Unusual Service Account Secret Access via New User Agent in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(external, opens in a new tab or window).