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This morning I made a PR which triggered a Cloud Build for my staging enviroment but failed to deploy the results to GAE.

The error was as follows:

ERROR: (gcloud.app.deploy) PERMISSION_DENIED: You do not have permission to act as '[redacted]@appspot.gserviceaccount.com' Step #4: - '@type': type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.ResourceInfo Step #4: description: You do not have permission to act as this service account. Step #4: resourceName: [redacted]@appspot.gserviceaccount.com Step #4: resourceType: serviceAccount

When I look at https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-build/settings/service-account Cloud build has the follow service account permissions ENABLED:

  • App Engine Admin
  • Cloud KMS

Checking https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/iam I can see that the cloudbuild service account has the following roles:

  • App Engine Admin
  • App Engine Deployer
  • Cloud Build Service Account
  • Cloud KMS CryptoKey Decrypter
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    Hi @LawsonTaylor considering the error message you are seeing, it might be related to the fact that the default Cloud Build service account does not allow access to deploy App Engine. Could you please follow the steps here to give deployer permission to your Cloud Build service account? Commented Oct 7, 2020 at 13:04
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    @gso_gabriel For my projects, this has been working fine for quite some time, but stopped working this morning. This doc may need to be updated: cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/deploying-builds/… - I only had the "App Engine Admin" permission as indicated by the doc. I added the "App Engine Deployer" IAM Permission as your link suggested, and it still doesn't work. Commented Oct 9, 2020 at 11:58
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    Just to add more details, this is definitely a recent change/regression in GCP. My build account previously had the App Engine Deployer role, but started failing with a recent build. I had to use @Nebulastic 's answer to fix. Would be nice if the App Engine team could comment with a bug number - seems very strange that having "App Engine Deployer" role alone is no longer enough to actually deploy App Engine. Commented Oct 12, 2020 at 17:55

7 Answers 7

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63

According to the provided error, it seems like you need to add some delegation to your service account. This means that the service account can act on behalf of another service account. Do not add this permission on the project level, since it poses a security risk! Below you can find an example of how to add roles/iam.serviceAccountUser on another service account.

PROJECT_ID=xxxxxx

PROJECT_NUMBER=$(gcloud projects list \
  --format="value(projectNumber)" \
  --filter="projectId=${PROJECT_ID}")

gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding \
    ${PROJECT_ID}@appspot.gserviceaccount.com \
    --member=serviceAccount:${PROJECT_NUMBER}@cloudbuild.gserviceaccount.com \
    --role=roles/iam.serviceAccountUser \
    --project=${PROJECT_ID}

To summarize, the service account must have the iam.serviceAccounts.actAs permission, which is included in the roles/iam.serviceAccountUser role. Updated Google documentation can be found here.

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16 Comments

Since this morning (2020-10-09) some of our deployment started to fails and this solved it. In our case we are using: gcloud --quiet --project "$GOOGLE_PROJECT_NAME" app deploy app.yaml and the deployment have previously been working for months.
Yes but your permissions are on the project level and should be on the service account level. Saying "it works" is not always the best solution.
You can execute this on the command line with the gcloud sdk.
I have filled an issue on Google issue tracker (see issuetracker.google.com/issues/170538212) for this issue and in the response Google confirmed the serviceAccountUser role is now required. They also updated the documentation at cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/nodejs/…
Never mind, I found the answer here: stackoverflow.com/a/61336174/6181476. Thanks, man!
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22

I had the same issue. For me I had to add the Service Account User role to my circle ci user in IAM. Maybe you can do the same for cloudbuild.

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7 Comments

This worked for me too, it looks like something has changed but the docs are up to date with the roles required for automation. cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/roles
Just giving the Service Account the "Service Account User" role is too broad, and basically gives admin right on the project to your deployer/cloudbuild service account. One should use gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding to bind the role only to the '[redacted]@appspot.gserviceaccount.com' SA. See answer from Nebulastic.
Totally agree with @Mayeu, this way your cloudbuild service account can perform almost any action within the project, not a best practice. The scope should be only the service account for which permissions need to be delegated.
Although this would work, you are creating a serious security issue here. Never set the Service Account User role in the project IAM, since it allows a user account to act as any other user account.
I am actually very confident that you should not put this as a project role, but as a service account binding! This is exactly what I described in my post.
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First we go to the permission manager and select the project that we want to add permissions.; https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/

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12

I grant Service Account User permission to my CI/CD service account. That works.

Screenshot of IAM Screenshot of IAM

Screenshot of my Gitlab CI/CD configuration Screenshot of my Gitlab CI/CD configuration

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2 Comments

This is basically over-permissioning, since the service account can now act on behalf of all the other service accounts within the project. See my answer for the solution.
This it too much over-permissioning. Cant do in prod
1

To resolve this issue, you can add Service Account User IAM permission to your CI/CD pipeline service account.

Eg. If you're using Cloud Build, then add Service Account User role to your {project-number}@cloudbuild.gserviceaccount.com service account

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1 Comment

This role is way too broad. You should only specify it on the service account level. Otherwise, anyone using cloudbuild can act as another service account, posing serious security issues.
0

Terraform way:

Granting service account user role to cloud sv account only on the GAE service account

data "google_app_engine_default_service_account" "app_engine_sv_account" {
  project = var.project_id
}

resource "google_service_account_iam_member" "cb-deploy-iam" {
  service_account_id = data.google_app_engine_default_service_account.app_engine_sv_account.name
  role               = "roles/iam.serviceAccountUser"
  member             = "serviceAccount:${var.cb_sv_account_email}"
}
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-1

It looks as though this question is answered with the .ActAs permission being added to the Gitlab or CircleCI account.

I haven't had occasion to test yet - if anyone else has and can post details - please do so;

This is the proposed answer from what I can gather: How do you enable "iam.serviceAccounts.actAs" permissions on a sevice account?

Nebulastic has a very nice answer above but the {PROJECT_ID} would need to be swapped with the Gitlab or CircleCI account name, not the project named account.

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1 Comment

Arguably it is NOT clear - since I discovered this post via Google Fu which I am SURE others have as well... hence my sharing of helpful information highly related to the post in the spirit of supporting the community, @Nebulastic.

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