Skip to content
Forestall

GWS_ADD_GROUP_OWNER

Copy page

Summary
Forestall ACL Alias GWS_ADD_GROUP_OWNER
GWS Alias Add Group Owner
Affected Object Types GWS Group
Exploitation Certainty Certain
Granting Roles / Positions Google Workspace Super Admin, Groups Admin (directory role), existing Group Owner

Description

GWS_ADD_GROUP_OWNER represents the ability to add new owners to a Google Workspace Group. Granting the OWNER role transfers the highest level of group administrative authority — an owner can add or remove members, managers, and other owners; modify all group settings; and delete the group.

This is the highest-impact group management action edge in the GCP attack surface. An attacker who exercises it does not merely gain group membership — they transfer full administrative control. The new owner can then add controlled identities as members to inherit GCP IAM roles, open the group’s join policy to ALL_IN_DOMAIN_CAN_JOIN (making any org user eligible to self-join and inherit roles without further admin action), or enable allowExternalMembers=true to bypass Domain-Restricted Sharing policies. An owner can also set whoCanLeaveGroup = NONE_CAN_LEAVE to prevent members from removing themselves, and add additional backdoor owner accounts to create a resilient foothold that survives partial remediation.

A less obvious risk is the naming collision attack: an attacker with the ability to create or manage groups can create a group whose email matches one an admin intends to bind to GCP IAM. If the admin later binds the wrong group, the attacker retroactively gains access. There is no dedicated detection rule for this pre-provisioning race condition.

All ownership changes and group settings modifications are recorded only in Google Workspace audit logs. GCP’s setIamPolicy event is never triggered, so monitoring only GCP Cloud Audit Logs provides no visibility into this attack path.

Identification

gcloud CLI

# Find all GCP-bound groups across the organization (primary target list)
gcloud asset search-all-iam-policies \
    --scope='organizations/ORG_ID' \
    --query='memberTypes:group' \
    --format="table(resource, policy.bindings[].role, policy.bindings[].members)"
# Enumerate current owners on a specific group
GROUP_EMAIL="[email protected]"
gcloud identity groups memberships list \
  --group-email=$GROUP_EMAIL \
  --format="table(preferredMemberKey.id, roles[0].name)" | grep OWNER

Exploitation

# Add attacker as OWNER of a privileged group
GROUP_EMAIL="[email protected]"
gcloud identity groups memberships add \
  --group-email=$GROUP_EMAIL \
  [email protected] \
  --roles=OWNER


# After becoming owner: add a controlled member to inherit GCP IAM roles
gcloud identity groups memberships add \
  --group-email=$GROUP_EMAIL \
  [email protected] \
  --roles=MEMBER


# Wait 1-5 minutes for IAM propagation
gcloud projects list

Mitigation

  1. Convert GCP-bound groups to security groups — restricts all membership and settings changes to Super Admins only: 
    gcloud identity groups update GROUP_EMAIL \
      --labels=cloudidentity.googleapis.com/groups.security=''
  2. Restrict owner assignment — configure group settings so only Super Admins can assign the OWNER role, not existing owners.
  3. Limit the Groups Admin role to the minimum required set of administrators via Google Admin Console → Admin roles → Groups Admin → Admins.
  4. Alert on all ownership changes for groups with GCP IAM bindings — any OWNER assignment should trigger an immediate review.
  5. Audit existing owners on sensitive groups: 
    gcloud identity groups memberships list \
      --group-email=SENSITIVE_GROUP_EMAIL \
      --format="table(preferredMemberKey.id, roles[0].name)" | grep OWNER

Detection

Monitor group membership and settings changes in Google Workspace Audit Logs. The most dangerous post-owner-add actions (join policy changes, external member enablement) appear as settings change events — a separate filter from membership events.

Google Admin Console

  1. Open Google Admin Console (admin.google.com) → Reporting → Audit and investigation → Groups Enterprise log events.
  2. Filter by Event Name: Add member or Update member where role = OWNER.
  3. Also filter by Event Name: Change group settings — look for changes to whoCanJoin, allowExternalMembers, whoCanLeaveGroup.

Cloud Logging (GCP)

# Detect owner role assignments and group settings changes
gcloud logging read \
  'logName="organizations/ORG_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity" AND protoPayload.serviceName="admin.googleapis.com" AND (protoPayload.methodName="google.admin.AdminService.addGroupMember" OR protoPayload.methodName="google.admin.AdminService.updateGroupMember" OR protoPayload.methodName="google.admin.AdminService.updateGroupSettings")' \
  --format="table(timestamp, protoPayload.authenticationInfo.principalEmail, protoPayload.request.groupKey, protoPayload.request.memberKey, protoPayload.request.role)"

References

Was this page helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.