advanced-security

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Accessibility improvements for security overview

New accessibility enhancements to the security overview data visuals make it easier and more inclusive for everyone to interact with and understand code security insights.

Graph showing open alerts by severity on the security overview dashboard, with enhanced accessibility

What’s new?

  • Improved visual accessibility: Enhanced color contrast and better support for users with low vision, making it easier to interpret data visuals.
  • Keyboard navigation enhancements: Full keyboard-only navigation, including a clearly visible focus indicator, for smoother interactions without a mouse.
  • Assistive technology support: Improved compatibility with screen readers for better navigation and understanding of content.

These updates are now generally available on GitHub Enterprise Cloud and will be included in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.16.

Join the discussion in the GitHub Community and read more about GitHub’s commitment to accessibility

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Secret scanning: ability to add an optional comment when reopening alerts

To remediate and triage alerts more effectively, you can now add an optional comment when reopening a secret scanning alert. Comments will appear in the alert timeline. Previously, you could only add a comment when closing the alert.

Learn more about how to secure your repositories with secret scanning. Let us know what you think by participating in a GitHub community discussion or signing up for a 60 minute feedback session.

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Push protection bypass request details are included in the REST API, webhooks, and audit logs for secret scanning alerts

Secret scanning alerts resulting from an approved push protection bypass request will now show relevant details in the alert information surfaced in the REST API, webhooks, and audit logs. This allows information currently visible in the UI to be used in automated workflows.

Secret scanning alert REST API endpoints and webhook events now include the following fields:
– push_protection_bypass_request_reviewer
– push_protection_bypass_request_comment
– push_protection_bypass_request_html_url

Audit log events for push protection bypasses now include the following fields:
– push_protection_bypass_request_reviewer
– push_protection_bypass_request_reviewer_id

Learn more about secret scanning and bypass controls for push protection.

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SAST vulnerabilities summary now available on the security overview dashboard

Now you can better manage and mitigate your security vulnerabilities with a new SAST vulnerabilities summary table, available directly on the security overview dashboard. This feature highlights your top 10 CodeQL and third-party open alerts by count, grouped by vulnerability type.

The SAST vulnerabilities table on the Detection tab of the overview dashboard

When prioritizing which alerts to address first, it’s crucial to consider various factors. One significant factor is the number of instances of a vulnerability across your codebase. The more areas of code affected by a vulnerability, the higher the potential risk for exploitation.

To access the new SAST vulnerabilities table, click your profile photo in the top-right corner of GitHub.com and select the organization or enterprise you want to view. For organizations, go to the Security tab and scroll to the bottom of the Detection view on the Overview dashboard. For enterprises, click Code Security in the sidebar, then select Overview and scroll to the bottom of the Detection view.

The SAST vulnerabilities summary is now generally available on GitHub Enterprise Cloud and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.16.

Learn more about security overview insights and join the discussion within the GitHub Community

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Copilot Autofix for Dependabot now available for TypeScript repositories (private preview)

Copilot Autofix for Dependabot is now available in private preview for TypeScript repositories.

This new feature combines the power of GitHub Copilot with Dependabot, making it easier than ever to automatically fix breaking changes introduced by dependency updates. With Copilot Autofix, you can save time and minimize disruptions by receiving AI-generated fixes to resolve breaking changes caused by dependency upgrades in Dependabot-authored pull requests.

Why Copilot Autofix for Dependabot?

Dependency updates can introduce breaking changes that lead to failing CI tests and deployment delays. Identifying the exact cause of these breaks and implementing the correct fix can require significant time and effort, making it challenging to stay on the most up-to-date and secure version of a dependency.

Dependabot can now leverage the power of Copilot Autofix to analyze dependency updates that fail CI tests and suggest fixes, all within the pull request. Copilot Autofix for Dependabot not only helps keep your dependencies up to date, but also keeps your CI green. Staying up-to-date on dependencies upgrades with breaking changes is now easier and faster than ever.

How to join the private preview

To sign up for the feature waitlist, fill out the form to express your interest. We’ll notify selected participants as we roll out the feature over the coming weeks.

This feature is available in private preview to GitHub Advanced Security customers on cloud deployments. Starting today, we support TypeScript repos with tests set up in GitHub Actions. As we continue to develop this feature, we will expand coverage for additional languages and testing requirements.

Learn more

Please keep an eye on future changelogs for more updates as the feature moves to public preview and general availability.

To learn more, please join the waitlist or check out the latest GitHub feature previews.

To hear what others are saying and offer your own take, join the discussion in the GitHub Community.

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Security campaigns with Copilot Autofix are now in public preview

Security campaigns with Copilot Autofix are now in public preview. Available as part of GitHub Advanced Security, security campaigns rapidly reduce your backlog of application security debt. By using Copilot Autofix to generate contextual explanations and code suggestions for up to 1,000 historical code scanning alerts at a time, security campaigns help developers and security teams collaborate to fix vulnerabilities with speed and confidence.

Code scanning detection engines such as GitHub’s CodeQL are incredibly effective at automatically notifying developers about potential security vulnerabilities in their code in the form of code scanning alerts. Most developers fix these vulnerabilities with the help of Copilot Autofix when they’re flagged pull requests. However, in situations where these alerts aren’t remediated in a timely manner, security debt can build up and pose a serious risk to deployed applications. Using security campaigns, security teams and developers can easily collaborate to remediate and eradicate security debt at scale, with the help of Copilot Autofix.

A security campaign on GitHub can contain a large number of code scanning alerts, prioritized by your security team to be fixed within a chosen timeframe. When a campaign is created, Copilot Autofix automatically suggests fixes for all supported alerts, and developers who are most familiar with the code are notified. From there, they can review the fixes, open pull requests, and remediate the security debt.

Security teams can monitor the progress of the campaign and track the number of alerts that have been fixed. Using security campaigns, security and developer teams work together with Copilot Autofix to remove security debt in targeted efforts aimed at maximizing impact by focusing on the alerts that matter.

Organization-level view of a security campaign to remediate SQL injection alerts

Security campaigns are available for users of GitHub Advanced Security on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. For more information about security campaigns, see About security campaigns in the GitHub documentation.

If you have any feedback on security campaigns: join the discussion in the GitHub Community.

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Copilot Autofix now supports partner code scanning tools

Copilot Autofix now supports fix suggestions for problems detected by ESLint, a partner code scanning tool. Autofixes are available both in pull requests and for historical alerts.

Setting up ESLint using a starter workflow

ESLint is the first partner tool supported by Copilot Autofix. Support for additional partner tools, such as JFrog SAST and Black Duck’s Polaris™ platform powered by Coverity®, will be announced by future changelogs when available. To opt out of fix suggestions for third-party tools, you can disable this feature from the code scanning settings page.

Example of a fix suggestion for an existing ESLint alert

In order for Copilot Autofix to pick up ESLint alerts, you need to enable ESLint as a code scanning tool in the target repository. For reference, you can select an updated starter workflow when setting up a new GitHub Actions workflow in your repository. You can use both ESLint scanning and the CodeQL analysis in the same repository.

Disabling fix suggestions for third-party tools

For more information, see: Responsible use of Copilot Autofix for code scanning. If you have feedback for Copilot Autofix for code scanning, please join the discussion here.

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Secret scanning supports delegated bypass for push protection on file uploads (GA)

Secret scanning now supports delegated bypass controls for repository file uploads from the browser.

If delegated bypass is configured for an organization or repository, anyone without bypass permissions will need to submit a bypass request to approved reviewers in order to upload a file that contains a secret. This helps ensure that secrets are not accidentally committed to a repository.

For more information, see “About secret scanning” and “About delegated bypass for push protection.”

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Secret scanning support for public leak and multi-repository indicators in webhook and audit log events

Public leak and multi-repository indicators are now included in webhook and audit log event payloads for secret scanning alerts.

What are public leak and multi-repo labels?

To help you triage and remediate secret leaks more effectively, GitHub secret scanning indicates if a secret detected in your repository has also leaked publicly with a public leak label on the alert. The alert also indicates if the secret was exposed in other repositories across your organization or enterprise with a multi-repo label.

These labels provide additional understanding into the distribution of an exposed secret, while also making it easier to assess an alert’s risk and urgency. For example, a secret which has a known associated exposure in a public location has a higher likelihood of exploitation. Detection of public leaks is only currently supported for provider-based patterns.

The multi-repo label makes it easier to de-duplicate alerts and is supported for all secret types, including custom patterns. You can only view and navigate to other enterprise repositories with duplicate alerts if you have appropriate permissions to view them.

Both indicators currently apply only for newly created alerts.

Learn more

Learn more about reviewing alert labels and how to secure your repositories with secret scanning. Let us know what you think by participating in our GitHub community discussion or signing up for a 60 minute feedback session.

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Bypass controls for push protection are generally available

Secret scanning bypass privileges for push protection are now generally available.

These controls allow you to choose who is allowed to bypass push protection, and introduce a review and approval cycle for pushes containing secrets from all other contributors. This can ensure push protection blocks are not accidentally bypassed and prevent secrets from being committed to your repositories.

Controls for bypass privileges can be set as part of your organization’s security configurations or at the repository level in your code security settings. You can add specific roles or teams to your bypass list. The individuals in these roles and teams will be able to bypass push protection themselves, and will act as reviewers for any bypass requests submitted by another contributor. The requests can be approved or denied, determining whether the commit can proceed into the repository.

screenshot of bypass privileges within security configurations

Reviewers can view the requests under the Security tab at either the organization level or repository level. Requests can also be accessed through audit log and webhook events.

Learn more about secret scanning and push protection, or join the discussion in the GitHub Community.

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Secret scanning: improvements for alerts with known public leaks and enterprise duplicates

You can now view exact locations of known public leaks for a secret scanning alert, as well as any repositories with duplicate alerts across your enterprise. Public leak and duplicate alert labels are now also surfaced via the REST API.

What are public leak and multi-repo labels?

To help you triage and remediate secret leaks more effectively, GitHub secret scanning now indicates if a secret detected in your repository has also leaked publicly with a public leak label on the alert. The alert also indicates if the secret was exposed in other repositories across your organization or enterprise with a multi-repo label.

These labels provide additional understanding into the distribution of an exposed secret, while also making it easier to assess an alert’s risk and urgency. For example, a secret which has a known associated exposure in a public location has a higher likelihood of exploitation. Detection of public leaks is only currently supported for provider-based patterns.

The multi-repo label makes it easier to de-duplicate alerts and is supported for all secret types, including custom patterns. You can only view and navigate to other enterprise repositories with duplicate alerts if you have appropriate permissions to view them.

Both indicators currently apply only for newly created alerts.

Learn more

Learn more about reviewing alert labels and how to secure your repositories with secret scanning. Let us know what you think by participating in our GitHub community discussion or signing up for a 60 minute feedback session.

See more

Copilot secret scanning for generic passwords is generally available

Copilot secret scanning is now generally available. Copilot secret scanning, which detects generic passwords using AI, offers greater precision for unstructured credentials that can cause security breaches if exposed. Over 350,000 repositories have already enabled this password detection.

To enable Copilot secret scanning, select “Scan for generic secrets” within your code security and analysis settings at the repository level, or the code security global settings at the organization level. You can also use the Update a repository API endpoint for enablement at the repository level. Support for enablement through your organization’s code security configurations, as well as enablement for organizations and enterprises with the API, will come in a future release.

Password detection is backed by the Copilot API and is available for all repositories with a GitHub Advanced Security license. You do not need a Copilot license to enable generic secret detection. Passwords found in git content will create a secret scanning alert in the “Experimental” tab, separate from regular alerts.

In effort to reduce false positives and detections of secrets that are used in tests, Copilot secret scanning will not:
– detect more than 100 passwords per push
– detect secrets in media files (.svg, .png, .jpeg)
– detect secrets in language files (.js, .py, .ts, .java, .cs, or .rb) that contain test, mock, or spec in the filepath
– detect additional secrets in files where five or more alerts have been marked as false positive

Note that passwords will not be detected in non-git content, like GitHub Issues or pull requests. Passwords are also excluded from push protection, another feature of secret scanning designed to prevent sensitive information from being pushed to your repository.

Learn more about secret scanning and generic secret detection or join our community discussion.

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New code security configurations let you set security features at the organization level

Now you can simplify the rollout of GitHub security products within your organization. Code security configurations now allow you to define collections of security settings and apply those settings to groups of repositories. Configurations help you maintain security settings for important features like code scanning, secret scanning, and Dependabot.

As previously announced in August, starting today, you can no longer enable or disable GitHub security features from the organization-level security coverage view, which has been deprecated and replaced with code security configurations for managing these settings.

Learn more about code security configurations and send us your feedback.

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Now you can choose a specific branch when using Copilot Autofix for code scanning

When using Copilot Autofix for historical alerts, you can now choose the branch to which you want to commit an autofix. You can also decide whether to then open a pull request, check out the branch locally, or open it in GitHub Desktop.

Copilot Autofix provides automatic fix suggestions for code scanning alerts in your codebase.

Example of committing Copilot Autofix to branch

This update integrates Autofix more closely within the developer workflow, so you can quickly iterate on fix suggestions and collaborate on those with your team.

For more information, see: About Copilot Autofix for CodeQL code scanning. If you have feedback for Copilot Autofix for code scanning, please join the discussion here.

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Upcoming replacement of enterprise code security enablement UI and APIs

In the coming months, the current interface for managing code security settings for an enterprise will be deprecated and replaced with new and improved code security configurations that will provide you a more consistent and scalable way to manage security settings across repositories within your enterprise.

The current REST API endpoint to enable or disable a security feature for an enterprise is now deprecated. It will continue to work for an additional year in the current version of the REST API before being removed in September of 2025, but note that it may conflict with settings assigned in code security configurations if the configuration is unenforced, potentially resulting in a security configuration being unintentionally removed from a repository. To change the security settings for repositories at the enterprise level, you can use the current enterprise-level security settings UI or the upcoming code security configurations API.

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