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GCP - Compute Privesc

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Compute

For more information about Compute and VPC (netowork) in GCP check:

pageGCP - Compute Enum

compute.projects.setCommonInstanceMetadata

With that permission you can modify the metadata information of an instance and change the authorized keys of a user, or create a new user with sudo permissions. Therefore, you will be able to exec via SSH into any VM instance and steal the GCP Service Account the Instance is running with. Limitations:

  • Note that GCP Service Accounts running in VM instances by default have a very limited scope

  • You will need to be able to contact the SSH server to login

For more information about how to exploit this permission check:

pageGCP - Add Custom SSH Metadata

compute.instances.setMetadata

This permission gives the same privileges as the previous permission but over a specific instances instead to a whole project. The same exploits and limitations as for the previous section applies.

compute.instances.setIamPolicy

This kind of permission will allow you to grant yourself a role with the previous permissions and escalate privileges abusing them.

compute.instances.osLogin

If OSLogin is enabled in the instance, with this permission you can just run gcloud compute ssh [INSTANCE] and connect to the instance. You won't have root privs inside the instance.

compute.instances.osAdminLogin

If OSLogin is enabled in the instance, with this permission you can just run gcloud compute ssh [INSTANCE] and connect to the instance. You will have root privs inside the instance.

compute.instances.create,iam.serviceAccounts.actAs, compute.disks.create, compute.instances.create, compute.instances.setMetadata, compute.instances.setServiceAccount, compute.subnetworks.use, compute.subnetworks.useExternalIp

It's possible to create a virtual machine with an assigned Service Account and steal the token of the service account accessing the metadata to escalate privileges to it.

The exploit script for this method can be found here.

osconfig.patchDeployments.create | osconfig.patchJobs.exec

If you have the osconfig.patchDeployments.create or osconfig.patchJobs.exec permissions you can create a patch job or deployment. This will enable you to move laterally in the environment and gain code execution on all the compute instances within a project.

If you want to manually exploit this you will need to create either a patch job or deployment for a patch job run:

gcloud compute os-config patch-jobs execute --file=patch.json

To deploy a patch deployment:

gcloud compute os-config patch-deployments create my-update --file=patch.json

Automated tooling such as patchy exists to detect lax permissions and automatically move laterally.

You can also abuse this for persistence.

compute.machineImages.setIamPolicy

Grant yourself extra permissions to compute Image.

compute.snapshots.setIamPolicy

Grant yourself extra permissions to a disk snapshot.

compute.disks.setIamPolicy

Grant yourself extra permissions to a disk.

Bypass Access Scopes

Following this link you find some ideas to try to bypass access scopes.

Local Privilege Escalation in GCP Compute instance

pageGCP - local privilege escalation ssh pivoting

References

Learn AWS hacking from zero to hero with htARTE (HackTricks AWS Red Team Expert)!

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