You're reading from Cloud Penetration Testing for Red Teamers

Product typeBook

Published inNov 2023

Reading LevelIntermediate

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781803248486

Edition1st Edition

Languages

Concepts

Cloud Security

Author (1)

Kim Crawley

Security Features in GCP

Welcome to Google Cloud Platform, or GCP for short. GCP is the last of the top three most popular cloud platforms mentioned in this book. A lot of how GCP works is similar to AWS and Azure, but there are definitely some aspects to GCP that are unique and important for pentesters to understand before they pentest in the platform.

First, let’s examine some of the most commonly used aspects of the GCP ecosystem. In this chapter, you’ll learn about the most popular GCP services, applications, and features, and why they’re used. Next, we’ll look into GCP Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) features. We will conclude the chapter by discussing Google’s own GCP security tools and third-party security tools.

Before we pentest GCP, it helps to understand how the company we’re working for may use GCP, and what security features Google provides that can help pentesters...

Introduction to GCP

The first service that Google launched was its eponymous search engine. That was back in 1998, during a time in which ordinary people were starting to use the internet in large numbers. The very first server (http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/0-4-Google.htm) that founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin used for Google featured 10 4 GB HDDs, and their hardware was held in a frame made out of LEGO bricks! Their first server ran on Stanford University’s networking infrastructure and premises.

Google’s first service that was specifically targeted to business customers was its AdWords advertising platform, now known as Google Ads (https://ads.google.com/home/). In the years since, it has launched a handful of services that are still very popular, such as Gmail, and it has killed a much greater number of services (https://killedbygoogle.com/).

One collection of services that should hopefully endure and evolve for many years to...

Frequently used GCP SaaS applications

There are a large number of applications and services within the GCP ecosystem. Many of those services are classified as SaaS. That means that Google provides the infrastructure, the platform, and the application that runs in it. As a user or organization, you’re only responsible for the code or data you enter into its applications.

As Google has more responsibility and control over its SaaS services, your ability to pentest those services while abiding by their policies is very limited to nonexistent. Google Support says the following (https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/6262505?hl=en#zippy=%2Cdo-i-need-to-notify-google-that-i-plan-to-do-a-penetration-test-on-my-project):

Do I need to notify Google that I plan to do a penetration test on my project?

If you plan to evaluate the security of your Cloud Platform infrastructure with penetration testing, you are not required to contact us. You will have to abide by the Cloud Platform...

GCP IaaS services

With GCP IaaS services, you get maximum control, but you also have maximum responsibility. Google provides its networking infrastructure and the hardware and tools for deploying VMs.

The main difference between using IaaS services and deploying an on-premises cloud network is that the organization you work for won’t have physical access to the infrastructure. No one in the organization you work for will be allowed to touch the physical power button on any of the computers in the GCP data centers. You aren’t even allowed to physically enter those data centers.

But you have a lot more freedom to conduct penetration testing activities in IaaS services. You should still make sure that you abide by the Google Cloud Platform Acceptable Use Policy. But don’t fret, because all of the pentesting tutorials that I give in Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 are policy compliant!

Here are the GCP components that give your organization Google’s infrastructure...

GCP PaaS services

PaaS is the space between SaaS and IaaS. SaaS means you’re basically just running your code, commands, documents, or media in Google’s applications, on Google’s platform, and on Google’s infrastructure. IaaS means Google is letting you use its hardware, but you’re responsible for providing your own platforms and applications. PaaS means Google is offering you a platform you can run your own applications in.

PaaS is not quite as much responsibility and work as deploying with IaaS, but it’s still more work than SaaS. Here are some services in GCP that provide customers with Google’s platforms to support a customer’s own custom applications.

Cloud SDK

Cloud SDK (https://cloud.google.com/sdk) is a standard development kit for developers. It includes client libraries for Java, Python, Node.js, Ruby, Go, .NET, C++, PHP, and Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP). It has special tools that can be...

GCP security controls and tools

Let’s get into the applications and features Google makes available to GCP customers for the sake of improving their security. Your organization really ought to be using them! Then, we’ll get into some useful third-party security tools.

Security controls

Google provides a lot of useful applications that can help us manage our security posture in GCP. Let’s have a look at them.

Identity and Access Management

Identity and Access Management (IAM) (https://cloud.google.com/iam) is one of the crucial cloud security components, and GCP is no exception.

Users and groups of users are granted certain permissions and rights regarding what they’re allowed to do with your organization’s files, applications, and other sorts of cloud resources. Your organization should implement the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), so users and groups only have as much access as they need to perform their jobs, and no more.

...

Summary

GCP’s roots stem from when Google released App Engine in 2008, a way for businesses and other entities to launch their own web applications within Google’s platform. App Engine proved to be very popular. So, in the years since, Google has released a large number of additional cloud services that enterprises and organizations can use for their production networks and networking applications.

GCP is how Google competes with Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft Azure. However, many organizations deploy multi-cloud networks that use all of those cloud platforms and more.

The two most important GCP components that are used in IaaS (but can also be used in SaaS and PaaS) are Compute Engine and Cloud Storage. Compute Engine is like the CPU, and Cloud Storage is your disks.

Google also provides a lot of very useful security controls that your organization really ought to use to harden their security against cyber attacks. They include Cloud Firewall, IAM, Secret...

Kim Crawley is a thought leader in cybersecurity, from pentesting to defensive security, and from policy to cyber threat research. For nearly a decade, she has contributed her research and writing to the official corporate blogs of AT&T Cybersecurity, BlackBerry, Venafi, Sophos, CloudDefense, and many others. She has been an internal employee of both Hack The Box and IOActive, a leading cybersecurity research firm. With the hacker mindset, she hacked her way into various information security subject matters. She co-authored one of the most popular guides to pentester careers on Amazon, The Pentester Blueprint, with Philip Wylie for Wiley Tech. She wrote an introductory guide to cybersecurity for business, 8 Steps to Better Security, which was also published by Wiley Tech. She also wrote Hacker Culture: A to Z for O'Reilly Media. To demonstrate her knowledge of cybersecurity operations, she passed her CISSP exam in 2023. In her spare time, she loves playing Japanese RPGs and engaging in social justice advocacy. She's always open to new writing, research, and security practitioner opportunities.
Read more about Kim Crawley

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