Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed particulars of a now-patched privilege escalation vulnerability in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Cloud Run that would have allowed a malicious actor to entry container pictures and even inject malicious code.
“The vulnerability may have allowed such an id to abuse its Google Cloud Run revision edit permissions with a view to pull non-public Google Artifact Registry and Google Container Registry pictures in the identical account,” Tenable safety researcher Liv Matan said in a report shared with The Hacker Information.
The safety shortcoming has been codenamed ImageRunner by the cybersecurity firm. Following accountable disclosure, Google addressed the issue as of January 28, 2025.
Google Cloud Run is a completely managed service for executing containerized functions in a scalable, serverless setting. When the expertise is used to run a service, container pictures are retrieved from the Artifact Registry (or Docker Hub) for subsequent deployment by specifying the picture URL.
At challenge is the truth that there are specific identities that lack container registry permissions however which have edit permissions on Google Cloud Run revisions.
Every time a Cloud Run service is deployed or up to date, a brand new model is created. And every time a Cloud Run revision is deployed, a service agent account is used to drag the required pictures.
“If an attacker beneficial properties sure permissions inside a sufferer’s challenge — particularly run.providers.replace and iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permissions — they might modify a Cloud Run service and deploy a brand new revision,” Matan defined. “In doing so, they might specify any non-public container picture throughout the similar challenge for the service to drag.”
What’s extra, the attacker may entry delicate or proprietary pictures saved in a sufferer’s registries and even introduce malicious directions that, when executed, may very well be abused to extract secrets and techniques, exfiltrate delicate information, and even open a reverse shell to a machine beneath their management.
The patch launched by Google now ensures that the consumer or service account creating or updating a Cloud Run useful resource has specific permission to entry the container pictures.
“The principal (consumer or service account) creating or updating a Cloud Run useful resource now wants specific permission to entry the container picture(s),” the tech large said in its launch notes for Cloud Run in January 2025.
“When utilizing Artifact Registry, make sure the principal has the Artifact Registry Reader (roles/artifactregistry.reader) IAM position on the challenge or repository containing the container picture(s) to deploy.”
Tenable has characterised ImageRunner for example of what it calls Jenga, which arises as a result of interconnected nature of assorted cloud providers, inflicting safety dangers to be handed alongside.
“Cloud suppliers construct their providers on high of their different present providers,” Matan stated. “If one service will get attacked or is compromised, the opposite ones constructed on high of it inherit the chance and change into susceptible as nicely.”
“This state of affairs opens the door for attackers to find novel privilege escalation alternatives and even vulnerabilities, and introduces new hidden dangers for defenders.”
The disclosure comes weeks after Praetorian detailed a number of methods a lower-privilege principal can abuse an Azure digital machine (VM) to realize management over an Azure subscription –
- Execute instructions on an Azure VM related to an administrative managed id
- Log in to an Azure VM related to an administrative managed id
- Connect an present administrative user-assigned managed id to an present Azure VM and execute instructions in that VM
- Create a brand new Azure VM, connect an present administrative managed id to it, and execute instructions in that VM by utilizing information aircraft actions
“After acquiring the Proprietor position for a subscription, an attacker could possibly leverage their broad management over all subscription sources to discover a privilege escalation path to the Entra ID tenant,” safety researchers Andrew Chang and Elgin Lee said.
“This path is based on a compute useful resource within the sufferer subscription with a service principal with Entra ID permissions which will permit it to escalate itself to World Administrator.”
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