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Preferred 2FA methods and settings improvements

The Primary field on two-factor authentication methods has been removed, and replaced with a Preferred option. This new option sets your preferred 2FA method for account login and use of the sudo prompt. You can choose between TOTP, SMS, security keys, or GitHub Mobile as your preferred 2FA method.

Additionally, you can now update your 2FA methods inline at https://github.com/settings/security, rather than going through the initial 2FA setup flow again.

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With this change, device-specific preferences for 2FA have been removed – each login will always default to your preferred method. If you previously set a default on one of your devices, your most recent choice has been copied to your account-wide preference. Otherwise, no preference will be set, and GitHub will select from your available second factors in this order: security keys, GitHub Mobile, TOTP, and then SMS.

To learn more, see "Changing your preferred two-factor authentication method" and "Configuring two-factor authentication".

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Unlink your email in case of 2FA lockout

You can now unlink your email address from a two-factor enabled GitHub account in case you’re unable to sign into it or recover it. When the worst occurs, and a user is unable to find an SSH key, PAT, or a device that’s been previously signed into GitHub in order to recover their account, they may want to start fresh with a new GitHub.com account. Since accounts on GitHub are required to each have a unique email address, though, locked out users can have difficulty starting a new account using their preferred email address.

In the 2FA recovery flow, a new option is presented at the bottom of the page, which will allow a user to remove their email address from a GitHub account:

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Selecting this option will send emails to each of the addresses on file for the account, each one containing a unique link. Following the link will remove the respective email address from the GitHub account, making it available again for a new account.

For more information, see Unlinking your email from a locked account.

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Second-factor validation after 2FA setup

GitHub.com users who set up two-factor authentication will see a prompt after 28 days, asking them to perform 2FA and confirm their second factor settings. This prompt helps avoid account lockout due to misconfigured authenticator applications (TOTP apps), especially those that failed to save the TOTP secret after validating it during set up.

This prompt appears in existing sessions if you haven't already performed 2FA as part of a sudo prompt or signing in on another device. If you find that you can't perform 2FA, you'll be presented with a shortcut that allows you to reset your 2FA setup.

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All users that enable 2FA will be eligible for this prompt, including users required to enable it by their organization or GitHub itself.

To learn more about two-factor authentication, see "Configuring two-factor authentication".

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Updates to the two-factor authentication setup flow

As we prepare for next year's 2FA requirement for active contributors on GitHub, we're making improvements to our two-factor setup UI to encourage best practices and ensure new 2FA users have their authentication factors set up correctly from the start.

We now take an opinionated stance on which second factor you should set up first – you'll no longer be asked to choose between SMS or setting up an authenticator app (known as TOTP), and instead see the TOTP setup screen immediately when first setting up 2FA.

If you wish to use SMS when setting up 2FA, you can switch your authentication method via the new option at the bottom. In the future, you'll also find security keys there as an option for initial setup on supported devices and browsers.

For more information, see "Configuring two-factor authentication".

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OIDC for Azure AD Enterprise Managed Users is now GA

OpenID Connect (OIDC) for authenticating enterprise managed users is now generally available for enterprises using Azure AD.

OIDC allows GitHub to use your identity provider's IP allow list policies to control where PAT and SSH keys can be used to access GitHub from, with granular control down to individuals. Enterprise customers using OIDC can now select whether to use their identity provider's IP allow list policies, or GitHub's built-in allow list feature.

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To learn more about OIDC and enterprise managed users, see "Enterprise Managed Users" and "Migrating from SAML to OIDC for Enterprise Managed Users". To learn more about Azure AD's IP allow list functionality, see "Location based Conditional access"

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New session and device management settings page

You can now review and manage your browser and GitHub Mobile sessions using the new Sessions tab in your user settings. This new tab includes all of your signed-in web sessions, as well as each GitHub Mobile app your account is signed into. You can revoke each web and mobile session individually. For mobile sessions, this signs you out of the GitHub Mobile app on that device, and disables that application for use as a second factor. The new Sessions tab replaces the web sessions view that was present under Password and authentication.

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This new settings page is generally available for GitHub.com users now, and will be released to GitHub Enterprise Server as part of GHES 3.8.

To learn more, see "Viewing and managing your sessions".

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High-impact package maintainers now require 2FA

Starting today, two-factor authentication (2FA) will be enforced for maintainers of all high-impact npm packages. A package is marked as a high impact package when they have more than 1 million weekly downloads or have more than 500 dependents. Maintainers of such packages will be notified 15 days in advance to enroll for 2FA.

To learn more about configuring 2FA, see Configuring two-factor authentication.
To learn more about 2FA in general, see About two-factor authentication.
For questions and comments, open a discussion in our feedback repository.

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Private beta introducing innersource restrictions for Enterprise Managed Users

GitHub Enterprise Cloud customers that use Enterprise Managed Users (EMUs) can now participate in a private beta for a new user role that has restricted visibility of internal repositories. This role helps companies to work with contractors and collaborators in a flexible and managed fashion on specific projects, while also sharing code and ideas without restrictions amongst employees.

Users are granted this new role by being marked as "Restricted Users" in your identity provider. Enterprise members granted this role can be added to Organizations as members, and added to Organization teams – but they won't be able to see internal repositories in other Organizations unless explicitly added to those repositories one-by-one.

If you would like to enroll your EMU enterprise in this private beta, please reach out to your account team or contact our sales team for more details.

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Introducing fine-grained personal access tokens

Today we're enabling fine-grained personal access tokens (PATs) in Public Beta for all user accounts on GitHub.com. This new type of token gives developers and resource owners more control and visibility around token access. Learn more about this new token type in today's blog post.

These new tokens offer many more permissions to choose from, must be scoped to a specific organization or account, and must expire. Organization owners will also find new tools to manage tokens that can access their organization, and can require approval of those tokens before they may be used.

PATsv2-light2

You can try out the new token creation flow, and provide feedback in our community discussion.

For more information, see "Creating a fine-grained personal access token".

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Automatic Single Sign On for Enterprise Managed Users – Public Beta

Enterprise administrators can now choose to redirect signed-out Enterprise Managed Users to their company's single sign-on (SSO) page. This feature is available as a public beta.
By default, enterprises with Managed Users enabled are hidden, showing a 404 error page any time an enterprise resource is visited by a user that isn't already signed in to the enterprise.
If you enable this feature for your enterprise, visitors to resources in your enterprise, org, or user namespaces will immediately be presented with an SSO redirect if not already signed in to your enterprise.
This redirect helps users sign in to the correct account, rather than giving them the impression that the link they were given no longer works.

You can find this setting in the Authentication security section of your Enterprise Settings, below the single sign-on configuration sections.
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Read more about this settings at "Automatic redirection for Enterprise Managed Users".

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False-alert flags will appear in users security log due to a bug in 2FA recovery events

Users with 2FA enabled may see false-alert flags in their security log for recovery_code_regenerated events between July 15 and August 11, 2022.
These events were improperly emitted during an upgrade to the 2FA platform. The storage format of the per-user value GitHub uses to generate your recovery codes was updated, causing the watch job to trigger the erroneous recovery_code_regenerated event.

No action is required from impacted users with regards to these events. GitHub has a policy to not delete security log events, even ones generated in error. For this reason, we are adding flags to signal that these events are false-alerts. No recovery codes were regenerated, and your existing saved recovery codes are still valid.

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Warning users about account relinking during SAML SSO

When users access an organization with SAML SSO, GitHub stores a link between the SAML identity and the user's GitHub account. This link is used by SCIM and team synchronization to grant access within your organization or enterprise. If you break this link by signing into that organization with a different SAML identity, you are likely to lose access to resources inside that organization.

Starting gradually today and being fully rolled out tomorrow, users will see a warning message if they attempt to sign in with a different SAML account and change their linked identity. They'll have the option to go back to their IdP to sign in with a different account, which is usually the correct option. If they really intend to break the link to their previous SAML account and link to a new one, they can choose to continue.

Learn more by reading "About Authentication with SAML SSO".

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Removed unencrypted Git protocol and certain SSH keys

GitHub changed which keys are supported in SSH and removed the unencrypted Git protocol.
You can read more about the motivation behind these changes in our blog post from last September.
As a reminder, these changes were:

  • Removed all support for DSA keys
  • Required SHA-2 signatures on all RSA keys uploaded after November 2, 2021 (RSA keys uploaded prior to the cutoff may still use SHA-1 signatures)
  • Removed legacy SSH algorithms HMAC-SHA-1 and CBC ciphers
  • Permanently disabled the unencrypted Git protocol
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GitHub’s SSH host keys are now published in the API

The GitHub metadata endpoint now contains our SSH host keys.
(We'll continue offering host key fingerprints as well.)

{
  // new entry
  "ssh_keys": [
    "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIOMqqnkVzrm0SdG6UOoqKLsabgH5C9okWi0dh2l9GKJl",
    "ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 AAAAE2VjZHNhLXNoYTItbmlzdHAyNTYAAAAIbmlzdHAyNTYAAABBBEmKSENjQEezOmxkZMy7opKgwFB9nkt5YRrYMjNuG5N87uRgg6CLrbo5wAdT/y6v0mKV0U2w0WZ2YB/++Tpockg=",
    "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAq2A7hRGmdnm9tUDbO9IDSwBK6TbQa+PXYPCPy6rbTrTtw7PHkccKrpp0yVhp5HdEIcKr6pLlVDBfOLX9QUsyCOV0wzfjIJNlGEYsdlLJizHhbn2mUjvSAHQqZETYP81eFzLQNnPHt4EVVUh7VfDESU84KezmD5QlWpXLmvU31/yMf+Se8xhHTvKSCZIFImWwoG6mbUoWf9nzpIoaSjB+weqqUUmpaaasXVal72J+UX2B+2RPW3RcT0eOzQgqlJL3RKrTJvdsjE3JEAvGq3lGHSZXy28G3skua2SmVi/w4yCE6gbODqnTWlg7+wC604ydGXA8VJiS5ap43JXiUFFAaQ=="
  ],
  // existing entry
  "ssh_key_fingerprints": [
    "SHA256_RSA": "nThbg6kXUpJWGl7E1IGOCspRomTxdCARLviKw6E5SY8",
    "SHA256_ECDSA": "p2QAMXNIC1TJYWeIOttrVc98/R1BUFWu3/LiyKgUfQM",
    "SHA256_ED25519": "+DiY3wvvV6TuJJhbpZisF/zLDA0zPMSvHdkr4UvCOqU"
  ],
  // ... rest of payload
}

These keys are in the OpenSSH known_hosts format for easy inclusion into existing known_hosts files.
This will make it easier to preconfigure systems which expect to connect via SSH.
For example, you can prime your CI runners with these keys before starting to fetch from GitHub.

The keys returned from the API include both SSH host keys that we're actively using, plus any that we're advertising via host key rotation for future use.
Currently, we're not offering any keys via rotation that aren't actively in use, but if we announce new host keys in the future, you can find them here as well during the rotation period.

See the meta API endpoint to learn more.

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Expiration dates of SAML-authorized PATs available via API

GitHub recently introduced the ability to set an expiration date when creating or regenerating a personal access token (PAT). For a PAT that is authorized to access an organization protected by SAML single sign-on (SSO), the expiration date of that PAT is now available via the GET /orgs/{org}/credential-authorizations API.

Organization administrators can use the following gh command to see the expiration dates of all PATs that are authorized to access their org by authenticating with a PAT that has the read:org scope:

gh api --paginate /orgs/:org/credential-authorizations --jq='.[] | [.authorized_credential_expires_at]'

Learn more about authorizing a personal access token for use with SAML single sign-on.

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Deprecation Notice: Recover Accounts Elsewhere

Recover Accounts Elsewhere allows a user to store a recovery token with a third-party recovery partner to use as a recovery method when their account is protected by two-factor authentication. Effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing new recovery tokens to be stored using Recover Accounts Elsewhere.

On December 1st, 2021, account recovery tokens stored using Recover Accounts Elsewhere will no longer be accepted as a recovery option when contacting support to recover access to your account. You will still be able to use our other recovery mechanisms to recover your account.

If you have registered an account recovery token using this feature, we recommend you take this opportunity to download your two-factor recovery codes. You can also revoke your recovery tokens using these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Account Security page.
  2. Scroll down to "Recovery tokens" and client "Edit".
  3. Click "Revoke token" for each token.

We'll be sending occasional email notifications throughout the deprecation period to all users with recovery tokens registered.

Questions? Take a look at our updated documentation on account recovery, or contact GitHub Support.

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Sunset Notice Affecting Actions: API Authentication via Query Parameters

GitHub will stop supporting API Authentication via Query Parameters with Actions on October 6th 2021 at 14:00 UTC. If you are passing credentials via query or path parameters, GitHub will respond with client errors. Please refer to this blog post for details on authenticating API requests to GitHub using the Authorization header.

Removal

  • October 6 2021 at 14:00 UTC
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Sunset Notice: API Authentication via Query Parameters

As previously announced, on September 8th 2021 at 14:00 UTC, GitHub will stop supporting API Authentication via Query Parameters.

If you are passing credentials via query or path parameters, GitHub will respond with client errors. Please refer to this blog post for details on authenticating API requests to GitHub using the Authorization header.

Removal

  • September 8 2021 at 14:00 UTC

Please check the latest Enterprise release notes to learn in which version API Authentication via Query Parameters will be removed.

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Git password authentication is shutting down

As previously announced, starting on August 13, 2021, at 09:00 PST, we will no longer accept account passwords when authenticating Git operations on GitHub.com. Instead, token-based authentication (for example, personal access, OAuth, SSH Key, or GitHub App installation token) will be required for all authenticated Git operations.

Please refer to this blog post for instructions on what you need to do to continue using git operations securely.

Removal

  • August 13, 2021, at 09:00 PST
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