Tutorial on privilege escalation and post exploitation tactics in Google Cloud Platform environments

An internal Red Team at GitLab has focused on understanding the potential security pitfalls within Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environments, especially concerning privilege escalation and data compromise tactics. This effort led to the creation of tools and insights shared with the security community, including a deep dive into vulnerabilities that can arise from misconfigured GCP setups. The blog details a simulation of an attack beginning with low-privilege access on a Linux virtual machine and explores methods for escalating privileges, moving laterally across systems, and exfiltrating sensitive data without any new vulnerabilities being discovered. It discusses tools such as gcp_firewall_enum for port scanning and gcp_enum for consolidating enumeration commands, and it provides insights into GCP's IAM permissions, resource hierarchy, and the potential risks of default service accounts. Additionally, the blog explores techniques for interacting with Google's cloud services to hunt for secrets and how leveraging existing permissions can lead to further access within a GCP environment and additional projects.

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