How to resolve GCloud permissions? - google-cloud-platform

I am trying to publish my Android app to our company's Play Store.
On Google API access page
I am trying to create new service account. It does not work.
You are missing at least one of the following required permissions:
Project
orgpolicy.policy.get resourcemanager.projects.get Check that the
folder, organization, and project IDs are valid and you have
permissions to access them
My GCP shows myname#github.com google account.
On the other side,Google API(Google Play Console) shows MYCOMPNAY Team account.
How to solve this IAM problem?

I'll do my best to answer but the question lacks some detail.
As the error describes, service accounts are a distinct type of credential used by Google that are intended to be used by software (rather than humans) for interacting with Google services. It makes some sense (though I'm unfamiliar with the Play process) that you'd need to use service accounts rather than human accounts with this service.
Unlike, regular (human) accounts (e.g. yourname#github.com), service accounts are owned by Google projects. When you create a service account, you'll need to scope the account to an existing Google project.
Google provides various Consoles for different services. I'm most familiar with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and so I would create projects and service accounts using GCP's CLI (Cloud SDK aka gcloud) or https://console.cloud.google.com. Are you using something similar?
Unfortunately, I think, Google's tools scope projects (even though these are universal Google resources) to specific platforms (Cloud, Firebase, Apps etc.) and so you may not be able to see all your projects via the e.g. Cloud Console.
So....
If you have a Play (!?) Console, there should be a mechanism to list|create projects. If you haven't already, created a project to own your service account. Then the tool should provide a mechanism to create a service account. Do so under that projects. Lastly, you'll need to grant the service account permissions so that it can do what you need it to do (e.g. publish your app).
If you add more details to your question, I may be able to help.
NOTE One distinction between human (e.g. yourname#github.com as a Google account) and a service account is that human accounts using 3-legged OAuth while service accounts use 2-legged OAuth. This is because the service account is not able to interact with OAuth prompts as a human user would and it is often a good "tell" when you need to use a human vs. a service account.
See:
Google Play: (API) Projects and Service Accounts
Understanding Service Accounts
Using OAuth for Server-to-Server apps

Related

Google Cloud Project Service Accounts

I am using a Google Cloud Project to automate the creation of some users inside of our organization. I have been using some API's that are hosted using the Google Cloud and have had no problem authenticating and using the API's, however I am not sure if I should be using a service account for this. I am currently using the Google Drive API, the Google Admin SDK(Directory API), the Sheets API, and the Docs API to create some accounts and manage an error log.
What I am asking is, should I be creating a service account to use the API's or is my own personal Google Workspace account okay for creating these? Is there a site/video/something that can guide me in the right direction if I do need to create a service account. I personally would rather have all of the automation using a service account for authentication, but the only videos and tutorials I found on using the service accounts are trying to use resources pertaining to Cloud Computing and service accounts that are impersonating other service accounts.
Using a Service Account is the best course of action for security reasons when you are the one giving authorization and authentication to your organization.
It is identical to granting access to any other identity to allow a service account access to a resource. For instance, suppose you only want an application that runs on Compute Engine to be able to generate items in Cloud Storage.
As a result, instead of managing each and every one of your users, you may limit and manage service accounts, assign certain roles to specific users or groups, and keep track of them because several service accounts can be created in a project.
Since you use Google Workspaces, I also advise you to read the shared documentation posted in the comments by #John Hanley.

GCP service accounts use case

I am just starting to use GCP and I have some questions about the service accounts.
Say there is a team of like 4 remotely located developers and we all want to use the python API to access GCP to launch instances and run stuff on them. My question is should every user get their own service account and keys or should one service account be shared by all? What is the intended use case here?
Google Cloud Service Accounts provide both identity and authorization to Google Cloud.
They are similar to user accounts. If you would like to do auditing or logging of actions with service accounts, you will want to use separate service accounts per user.
Service accounts are typically used for software applications to authorize their actions with the Google Cloud APIs. Service Accounts are using to issue OAuth 2.0 Access Tokens and optionally OIDC Identity Tokens. These tokens are what provides your application with authorization in Google Cloud.
My question is should every user get their own service account and
keys or should one service account be shared by all?
Yes, you should issue separate service account JSON key files to each developer. In the same way that you would not share usernames and passwords for computer systems, you would not share service accounts.
I have written a bunch of articles on Google Cloud Service Accounts that might help you understand how to configure and use them:
Google Cloud Service Accounts

How can I create a user in Google Cloud Platform without having to create a new Gmail user?

I want to create a user account for contacting developers using their own email addresses, not a new Gmail user in my account. Google Cloud Platform seems to let me create the users, but they never receive an email and hence can't complete the account creation.
As it happens, they are Google Docs users with their own Google accounts, but naturally they'd rather not have yet another email address. Is this even possible or does Google tie Google Cloud Platform into Google Docs? It seems a major limitation of Google Cloud Platform if they do.
Google Cloud Platform, G Suite (formerly "Google Docs") and all other Google services share an identity system. The identity system requires humans to have user accounts while software|machines have service accounts. One Google user account equals one user.
There are 2 flavors of (Google) user accounts: [your-name]#gmail.com and those created by an organization for its users someone#acme.com. For example, Google uses Google identity internally and so Googlers have emails [their-name]#google.com.
When you create a Google Cloud Platform project, anyone with a Google account may be added to it. Whether their Google account is something#gmail.com or an account created by their employer for them.
The only time your users will receive an email from you when you add them to a Google Cloud Platform project is if you make them project owners. This is because, ownership requires acceptance of Google's Terms of Service. Other types of users will be added without receiving an email (from Google about it) but will be able to access your project's resources.
I suspect your users have been added correctly and you're ready to go!
the most simple is to share a directory with those off-domain email addresses
this is possible, because Google Docs is backed by Google Drive as storage.
setting them up with IAM would only add complexity, which is not required
(at least, unless you won't have to grant them access to GCP resources).

AWS assume iam roles vs gcp's json files with private keys

One thing I dislike about Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is its less baked-in security model around roles/service accounts.
Running locally on my laptop, I need to use the service account's key specified in a JSON file. In AWS, I can just assume a role I have been granted access to assume (without needing to carry around a private key). Is there an analogue to this with GCP?
I am going to try and answer this. I have the AWS Security Specialty (8 AWS certifications) and I know AWS very well. I have been investing a lot of time this year mastering Google Cloud with a focus on authorization and security. I am also an MVP Security for Alibaba Cloud.
AWS has a focus on security and security features that I both admire and appreciate. However, unless you really spend the time to understand all the little details, it is easy to implement poor/broken security in AWS. I can also say the same about Google security. Google has excellent security built into Google Cloud Platform. Google just does it differently and also requires a lot of time to understand all the little features / details.
In AWS, you cannot just assume a role. You need an AWS Access Key first or be authenticated via a service role. Then you can call STS to assume a role. Both AWS and Google make this easy with AWS Access Keys / Google Service Accounts. Whereas AWS uses roles, Google uses roles/scopes. The end result is good in either platform.
Google authentication is based upon OAuth 2.0. AWS authentication is based upon Access Key / Secret Key. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Both can be either easy to implement (if you understand them well) or a pain to get correct.
The major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Alibaba, Google, IBM) are moving very fast with a constant stream of new features and services. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. Today, there is no platform that offers all the features of the others. AWS today is ahead both in features and market share. Google has a vast number of services that outnumber AWS and I don't know why this is overlooked. The other platforms are catching up quickly and today, you can implement enterprise class solutions and security with any of the cloud platforms.
Today, we would not choose only Microsoft or only Open Source for our application and server infrastructure. In 2019, we will not be chosing only AWS or only Google, etc. for our cloud infrastructure. We will mix and match the best services from each platform for our needs.
As described in the Getting Started with Authentication [1] page, for service accounts it is needed the key file in order to authenticate.
From [2]: You can authenticate to a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) API using service accounts or user accounts, and for APIs that don't require authentication, you can use API keys.
Service and user accounts needs the key file to authenticate. Taking this information into account, there is no manner to locally authenticate without using a key file.
Links:
[1] https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/getting-started
[2] https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/

Dummy account in Google Developer Console?

After we created a new project in Google developer console, we see one App Engine service account and one Google APIs service account already there in "Permission" page. But we have no client Ids in credential. Those two accounts seems to be dummy, what are they for?
They are not exactly dummy.
Those are "service" accounts meant to be used if you want an application or utility/tool that is sitting inside/on your app engine VM or compute engine VM, to perform actions that will require authentication ... having service accounts should ideally let you can skip the oauth step which would otherwise require browser access and user intervention ... things that an automated process in a VM should not have to deal with.
I'm guessing they were provisioned automatically with ease of use (? shrug) in mind so folks wouldn't have to go about creating them.
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/faq#serviceaccounts
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/authentication