You can now use the “security extended” query suite in code scanning default setup with CodeQL

March 21, 2023

You can now enable the "security extended" query suite for repositories using code scanning default setup with CodeQL. This query suite can be selected during set up, or changed at any time by viewing and editing the CodeQL configuration.

Code scanning's default query suites have been carefully designed to ensure that they look for the security issues most relevant to developers, whilst also minimizing the occurrence of false positive results. However, if you and you developers are interested in seeing a wider range of alerts you can enable the security extended query suite. This suite includes the same queries as in the default query suite, plus:

extra queries with slightly lower severity and precision.
extra experimental queries.

If you enable the security extended suite you may see more CodeQL alerts in your repository and on pull requests. For more information, see "About code scanning alerts".

Code scanning default setup query suites

Code scanning default setup view configuration

Read more about code scanning default setup.

Enable code scanning default setup with CodeQL at the organization level (public beta)

March 20, 2023

Enabling CodeQL analysis with code scanning default setup for eligible repositories in your organization is now as easy as a single click from the organization’s settings page or a single API call.

Code scanning enable all default setup button on the organization's 'Settings' page

You can use code scanning default setup to enable CodeQL analysis for pull requests and pushes on eligible repositories without committing any workflow files. Currently, this feature is only available for repositories that use GitHub Actions and it supports analysis of JavaScript/TypeScript, Python and Ruby. We plan to add support for additional languages soon.

To help you identify which repositories are eligible for the “enable all” feature, two new security coverage filters have been added:

code-scanning-default-setup: returns a list of enabled, eligible or not eligible repositories
advanced-security: returns a list of repositories with GitHub Advanced Security enabled or not enabled

This feature has been released as a public beta on GitHub.com and will also be available as a public beta on GitHub Enterprise Server 3.9.

Learn more about configuring code scanning at scale using CodeQL and the “Enable or disable a security feature for an organization” REST API

Learn more about GitHub Advanced Security

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Secret scanning changes to how you opt in to notifications

March 17, 2023

We announced two weeks ago that we are changing how you receive notifications for secret scanning alerts. From today, those changes are in effect.

What action should I take?

If you are a repository administrator, organization owner, security manager, or user with read access to secret scanning alerts:

Watch your repositories of interest by choosing "All activity" or "Security alerts." This helps you choose what events GitHub will notify you about.
In your user notification settings, you must choose "Email" in the "Watching" section. This tells GitHub how to notify you. Secret scanning only supports email notifications at this time.

If you're a commit author:

As long as you are not ignoring the repository in your watch settings, commit authors always receive notifications for new secrets that are leaked. This means you receive a notification for any secret committed after an initial historical scan has run on the repository.

Learn more