GKE Forbidden Creation Request

Last updated 6 days ago on 2026-07-16

Created 6 days ago on 2026-07-16

About

Detects denied GKE API create requests from non-control-plane identities. Failed creates can indicate RBAC probing, stolen credentials with insufficient privileges, or attempts to deploy unauthorized workloads.

Tags

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

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Execution (TA0002)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples

Developers or CI jobs with incomplete RBAC can generate denied creates. Tune after validating expected identities and namespaces. GKE control-plane and bootstrap identities are excluded.

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: 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:failure and
event.action:*.create and
gcp.audit.status.message:(*forbidden* or *Unauthorized*) and
not client.user.email:(
  "system:apiserver" or system\:kube-* or "system:cloud-controller-manager" or system\:gke-* or
  system\:node\:* or system\:serviceaccount\:kube-system\:* or system\:serviceaccount\:gke-managed* or
  "kubelet-bootstrap" or "kubelet-nodepool-bootstrap" or "gcp:kube-bootstrap"
) and
not user_agent.original:(*kubernetes/$Format)

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect GKE Forbidden Creation Request 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).