A recently-fixed privilege-escalation flaw has exposed critical risks in cloud service interdependencies and automatic service agents that could cause cascading vulnerabilities
As cloud environments grow more complex, security teams must anticipate and mitigate risks before attackers exploit them.
A recent case in point is the discovery of a privilege escalation vulnerability in Google’s serverless container platform, that could have allowed attackers to bypass permissions, gain unauthorized access to container images, and potentially expose sensitive data.
According to researchers from Tenable, who had been responsible for discovering and reporting the vulnerability, an attacker with edit permissions on Cloud Run could exploit these inherited permissions to retrieve a container image and use it to deploy applications. The key risks arising from this and similar vulnerabilities include allowing attackers to:
- Inspect private container images, extracting sensitive information or secrets
- Modify deployment parameters to execute unauthorized code
- Exfiltrate critical data for cyberespionage or malicious activities
The vulnerability has been fixed since 28 January 2025, and Google has now makes sure that the principal (user or service account) creating or updating a Cloud Run resource needs explicit permission to access the container image(s). The firm has also sent a Mandatory Service Announcement to affected Project, Folder, and Organization owners during the last week of November 2024.
This vulnerability, revolving around exploitation of the Cloud Run service agent with elevated permissions to pull private Google Container Registry or Artifact Registry images, is said to demonstrate the risks associated with cloud service interdependencies. When cloud providers build services on top of one another, security risks and weaknesses in one layer could cascade into other services.
According to Liv Matan, Senior Security Researcher, Tenable: “Cloud services function similarly: if one component has risky default settings, those risks can trickle down to dependent services, increasing the risk of security breaches.” Matan recapped some best practices to harden systems against similar future cloud service vulnerabilities:
- Follow the least-privilege model to prevent unnecessary permission inheritance
- Map hidden dependencies between cloud services using the appropriate tools
- Regularly review logs to detect suspicious access patterns
Could this agent-linked vulnerability signal the next wave of hacker exploits of agentic AI in cloud and even on-premises infrastructure?
