Credential Access: Agent Engine Anomalous Access to Metadata Service

This document describes a threat finding type in Security Command Center. Threat findings are generated by threat detectors when they detect a potential threat in your cloud resources. For a full list of available threat findings, see Threat findings index.

Overview

This rule detects attempts to fetch a service account token from the Compute Engine metadata server initiated by an agent deployed to Vertex AI Agent Engine. Findings are classified as Low severity by default.

Event Threat Detection is the source of this finding.

How to respond

To respond to this finding, do the following:

Review finding details

  1. Open the Credential Access: Agent Engine Anomalous Access to Metadata Service finding as directed in Reviewing findings. Review the details in the Summary and JSON tabs.
    • Affected resource, especially the following field:
      • Resource display name: the ReasoningEngine resource where the request occurred.
    • Related links:
      • Cloud Logging URI: link to Logging entries.
      • MITRE ATT&CK method: link to the MITRE ATT&CK documentation.

  2. Identify other findings that occurred at a similar time for this resource. Related findings might indicate that this activity was malicious, instead of a failure to follow best practices.

  3. Review the settings of the affected resource.

  4. Check the logs for the affected resource.

    1. On the Summary tab of the finding details in the Google Cloud console, go to Logs Explorer by clicking the link in the Cloud Logging URI field.
    2. Check the value in the textPayload field to identify the request activity log.

Research attack and response methods

Review the MITRE ATT&CK framework entry for this finding type: Cloud Instance Metadata API.

Implement your response

For response recommendations, see Respond to AI threat findings.

What's next