Google Workspace Admin Role Assigned to a User or Group

Last updated a month ago on 2026-05-29

Created 6 years ago on 2020-11-17

About

Assigning an administrative role to a user or group grants elevated privileges within Google Workspace, including access to the Google Admin console and the ability to manage domain resources and applications. Adversaries may assign administrator roles to an existing account or a newly created account/group to establish persistence, facilitate privilege escalation, and enable follow-on actions across the tenant. In particular, users with Super Admin privileges can bypass single sign-on (SSO) if it is enabled in Google Workspace.

Tags

Domain: CloudData Source: Google WorkspaceUse Case: Identity and Access AuditTactic: PersistenceTactic: Privilege EscalationLanguage: kuery

Severity

high

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Persistence (TA0003)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Account Manipulation (T1098)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Account Manipulation (T1098)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

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.

License

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

Definition

Rule Type: Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: filebeat-*logs-google_workspace.admin-*
Related Integrations: google_workspace(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗data_stream.dataset:"google_workspace.admin" and event.action:"ASSIGN_ROLE"
  and google_workspace.admin.role.name : *_ADMIN_ROLE

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Google Workspace Admin Role Assigned to a User or Group 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).