Description:
A service account is a special Google account that belongs to an application or a VM, instead of to an individual end-user. The application uses the service account to call the service's Google API so that users aren't directly involved. It's recommended not to use admin access for ServiceAccount.
Rationale:
Service accounts represent service-level security of the Resources (application or a VM) which can be determined by the roles assigned to it. Enrolling ServiceAccount with Admin rights gives full access to an assigned application or a VM. A ServiceAccount Access holder can perform critical actions like delete, update change settings, etc. without user intervention. For this reason, it's recommended that service accounts not have Admin rights.
Removing '*Admin' or '*admin' or 'Editor' or 'Owner' role assignments from service accounts may break functionality that uses impacted service accounts. Required role(s) should be assigned to impacted service accounts in order to restore broken functionalities.
From Google Cloud Console
From Google Cloud CLI
gcloud projects get-iam-policy PROJECT_ID --format json > iam.json
For example, to grant the role roles/appengine.appViewer to the 'ServiceAccount' which is roles/editor, you would change the example shown below as follows:
{
"bindings": [
{
"members": [
"serviceAccount:[email protected]",
],
"role": "roles/appengine.appViewer"
},
{
"members": [
"user:[email protected]"
],
"role": "roles/owner"
},
{
"members": [
"serviceAccount:[email protected]",
"serviceAccount:[email protected]"
],
"role": "roles/editor"
}
],
"etag": "BwUjMhCsNvY="
}
2. Update the project's IAM policy:
gcloud projects set-iam-policy PROJECT_ID iam.json