Skip to content

authentication

Subscribe to all “authentication” posts via RSS or follow GitHub Changelog on Twitter to stay updated on everything we ship.

→ ~ cd github-changelog
→ ~/github-changelog|main git log main
showing all changes successfully

Sunsetting API Authentication via Query Parameters, and the OAuth Applications API

In February 2020, to strengthen the security of our API, we deprecated API Authentication via Query Parameters and the OAuth Application API to avoid unintentional logging of in-transit access tokens. In the coming months, we'll be removing these endpoints and authentication flow according to the following schedule:

OAuth Application API

Please refer to this blog post on migrating to the replacement endpoints.

Brownouts

  • May 5, 2021: For 12 hours starting at 14:00 UTC
  • June 9, 2021: For 24 hours starting at 14:00 UTC

Removal

  • August 11 2021 at 14:00 UTC

Authentication via Query Parameters

Please refer to this blog post for authentication via headers.

Brownouts

  • May 5, 2021: For 12 hours starting at 14:00 UTC
  • June 9, 2021: For 24 hours starting at 14:00 UTC
  • August 11, 2021: For 48 hours starting at 14:00 UTC

Removal

  • September 8 2021 at 14:00 UTC

Please check the latest Enterprise release notes to learn in which version these functionalities will be removed.

See more

Authentication token format updates are generally available

As we announced previously, the format of GitHub authentication tokens has changed. The following token types are affected:

If you use any of these tokens, we encourage you to reset them now. This will give you additional security benefits and allow Secret Scanning to detect the tokens.

Notably, the token formats now include the following updates:

  • The character set changed from [a-f0-9] to [A-Za-z0-9_]
  • The format now includes a prefix for each token type:
    • ghp_ for Personal Access Tokens
    • gho_ for OAuth Access tokens
    • ghu_ for GitHub App user-to-server tokens
    • ghs_ for GitHub App server-to-server tokens
    • ghr_ for GitHub App refresh tokens

The length of our tokens is remaining the same for now. However, GitHub tokens will likely increase in length in future updates, so integrators should plan to support tokens up to 255 characters after June 1, 2021.

See more