No-Slop Research & Human Thoughts on Security

Kat Traxler

http://kattraxler.cloud

Bypassing GCP Org Policy with Custom Metadata

TLDR; Google makes use of custom metadata to authorize access to AI Notebooks and their web UIs. Individuals granted access via custom metadata need not have any IAM permissions on the compute instance, on the service account running the Notebook or even be a member of the Organization. Authorization via

GCP .actAs d-day > How not to remediate

On January 27, 2021 a major, potentially breaking change is coming to GCP. If you're using the default service account as the backing identity for several of GCP's data science PaaS services, the end user will be required to have the .actAs permission on the default

GCP Roles and Permissions 101

In GCP, access to resources is ultimately governed by Cloud IAM Permissions however, individual permissions are not directly assigned to principals. Instead, permissions are grouped together to create roles. These roles, rather than individual permissions, are then granted to principals in an IAM Policy. Roles can range from containing just

GCP Users and Group 101

Users and Groups are two types of principals that can be granted access in GCP. When users and groups are members in IAM Policies, they are referenced by their Google email addresses. You won't find a directory in Google Cloud listing users or groups. Instead, users and groups

GCP Service Account 101

Service Accounts are identities used for authenticating infrastructure and resources, typically for non-human entities. Service Accounts do not utilize passwords. While you have the option to generate and export a private key for a service account, it's generally unnecessary and can pose a security risk in most

GCP Resource Hierarchy 101

Google Cloud is organized into a hierarchy with each level or node of this structure being a resource. At the top of the hierarchy is the Organization followed by any number of nested Folders which then house Projects. At the lowest level of the hierarchy are the widgets the compose

GCP IAM Policy 101

The GCP model for managing access to resources has three main parts: * Who: (the principal) * What: (the role) * Resource In Google Cloud Platform (GCP), permissions are granted by combining the WHO (principal) and the WHAT (role) to form a policy. This policy is then applied, or 'bound', to