A practical GCP lab case study: overprivileged identities, leaked creds, weak controls — and how it all chains together
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Introduction
This article documents a comprehensive penetration test of a vulnerable Google Cloud Platform (GCP) lab environment. The test successfully identified and exploited 12 critical vulnerabilities, achieving Owner-level project access and establishing persistent backdoor access. This guide provides detailed explanations of each attack step, the reasoning behind the techniques used, and the impact of each vulnerability.
The target environment was intentionally misconfigured to demonstrate common cloud security pitfalls, including overprivileged service accounts, exposed credentials, weak access controls, and vulnerable application code. Through systematic reconnaissance and exploitation, we demonstrate how these misconfigurations can lead to complete cloud environment compromise.