Google's Vertex AI Is Over-Privileged. That's a Problem

**Executive Summary:** Palo Alto Networks found that Google Vertex AI's default Per-Project, Per-Product Service Agent (P4SA) is provisioned with excessive permissions, enabling a deployed AI agent to have broad access; researchers demonstrated a proof-of-concept agent that extracts P4SA credentials from the metadata service and uses them to access customer cloud projects and internal Google resources, and Google has updated documentation recommending Bring Your Own Service Account (BYOSA) and least-privilege practices to mitigate the risk.