Glossary
Domain-wide delegation
A Google Workspace setting that lets a service account or API client act as any user in the domain for listed scopes, without user consent.
Domain-wide delegation (DWD) lets a service account or API client impersonate any user in a Google Workspace domain for the OAuth scopes a super admin lists under Security → API controls → Manage Domain Wide Delegation. No end-user consent is involved.
It powers backup, migration and admin tools, and it is high-value persistence for an attacker. New delegations are logged in the Admin log as AUTHORIZE_API_CLIENT_ACCESS. The 2023 DeleFriend research showed that Google Cloud permission to create keys for a delegated service account is enough to reuse its delegation.
See: domain-wide delegation security risks and Google's DWD documentation.