misconfigured workloads can generate repeated denied secret gets during startup; confirm rbac intent before treating as compromise.

t1552
gcp
elastic

Techniques

T1552

Sample rules

GKE Secret Access from Node or Denied Service Account

source: elastic
technicques:
- T1552

Description

Detects GKE Secrets API activity that should not occur in normal cluster operation: a node identity (system:node:*) performing secrets get or list, or a pod service account failing a secrets get. Kubelet and node credentials are not expected to call the Secrets API for enumeration or direct reads, and a denied service-account secret get could indicate stolen-token probing or over-privileged tooling reaching beyond its RBAC.

Detection logic

data_stream.dataset:gcp.audit and service.name:k8s.io and
source.ip:(* and not (127.0.0.1 or "::1")) and
(
  (
    client.user.email:system\:node\:* and
    event.action:(io.k8s.core.v1.secrets.get or io.k8s.core.v1.secrets.list)
  ) or (
    client.user.email:system\:serviceaccount\:* and
    event.action:io.k8s.core.v1.secrets.get and
    event.outcome:failure
  )
)