The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20250307042617/https://github.blog/changelog/label/security/

security

Subscribe to all “security” 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

Java CSRF, Go 1.24 and C# 13 language features support available in CodeQL 2.20.5

CodeQL version 2.20.5 has been released and includes a host of coverage improvements, including extended support for C# 13 and new detection capabilities for Java and GitHub Actions workflow files.

CodeQL is the static analysis engine that powers GitHub code scanning, which finds and remediates security issues in your code.

CodeQL 2.20.5 adds full support for new language features introduced in C# 13 / .NET 9, as well improved coverage for .NET 9. This will improve the detection of alerts and reduce the chance of false negative results.

CodeQL Java analysis is improved with additional support for Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF). The new analysis capability detects vulnerabilities that occur when using HTTP request types that are not protected against cross site requests by default.

Go analysis has been updated to support Go 1.24, which includes new language features and improvements. This will improve the detection of alerts and reduce the chance of false negative results.

For a full list of changes, please refer to the complete changelog for version 2.20.5. Every new version of CodeQL is automatically deployed to users of GitHub code scanning on GitHub.com. The new functionality in CodeQL 2.20.5 will also be included in GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.17. If you use an older version of GHES, you can manually upgrade your CodeQL version.

See more

Improved code scanning coverage for GitHub Actions (Public Preview)

We recently launched analysis capabilities for GitHub Actions workflow files in public preview.

With the release of CodeQL 2.20.5, we are expanding the analysis capabilities to detect additional types of security risks associated with Actions workflow files and we have adjusted some of the existing queries.

The analysis coverage is improved with the addition of five new queries that identify additional types of security risks associated with Actions workflow files. The new queries are:

  • actions/envpath-injection/medium detects situations where user-controlled sources (like the text of a GitHub issue) are used to populate the PATH environment variable. This could allow an attacker to alter the execution of system commands.
  • actions/envvar-injection/medium detects situations where environment variables which are not properly sanitized can lead to the injection of additional unwanted variables, using new lines or {delimiters}.
  • actions/code-injection/medium– detects situation where user-controlled input can end up in contexts like run: or script:, leading to malicious code being executed and secrets being leaked.
  • actions/artifact-poisoning/medium detects situations where artifacts are not correctly extracted, stored and verified, which could result in a poisoned artifact being executed, leading to repository compromise.
  • actions/untrusted-checkout/medium detects situations where workflows triggered by events like pull_request_target or issue_comment can execute arbitrary code from untrusted sources, if followed by an explicit checkout.

Because of its lower precision and the large number of alerts it generates, the query actions/unpinned-tag has been moved to the security-extended query suite from the default query suite, and all existing alerts for this query will be automatically closed if the security-extended suite is not being used.

Three queries have been removed from the default and security-extended query suites because they do not produce relevant security alerts. Alerts generated by these queries will be closed automatically.

These changes are now available with the release of CodeQL 2.20.5. For a full list of changes, please refer to the complete changelog for version 2.20.5. Every new version of CodeQL is automatically deployed to users of GitHub code scanning on GitHub.com. The new functionality in CodeQL 2.20.5 will also be included in GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.17. If you use an older version of GHES, you can manually upgrade your CodeQL version.

See more

Dependabot version updates now support Docker Compose in general availability

Developers can now use Dependabot to keep their Docker Compose dependencies up to date automatically. For projects that use Docker Compose as a package manager, Dependabot version updates can now ensure dependencies stay current with the latest releases.

See more

Copilot Autofix is available for more code scanning alerts

Copilot Autofix helps you fix code scanning alerts and avoid introducing new security vulnerabilities by using large language models to suggest potential fixes.

We recently expanded the range of CodeQL security alerts where Copilot can suggest an autofix, covering a group that accounts for 29% of all CodeQL alerts. This expansion led to an 8% overall increase in alerts with an available autofix and a 270% increase in autofixes for this specific group of improved alerts. With more autofix suggestions, you can resolve security issues identified by CodeQL more easily—either by applying Copilot’s suggested fix directly or using it as a starting point for your own edits.

We made these improvements by analyzing our usage data to understand the most common types of alerts where Copilot was not suggesting fixes and then made a targeted effort to improve autofix for these alerts. Read more about the testing process that GitHub uses to identify the quality of autofix suggestions.

We continuously evaluate the performance of CodeQL and Copilot Autofix, so look for more improvements in the future.

See more

Dependabot helps users focus on the most important alerts by including EPSS scores that indicate likelihood of exploitation, now generally available

Dependabot alerts now feature the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) from the global Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), helping you better assess vulnerability risks.

EPSS scores predict the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited, with scores ranging from 0 to 1 (0 to 100%). Higher scores mean higher risk. We also show the EPSS score percentile, indicating how a vulnerability compares to others.

For example, a 90.534% EPSS score at the 95th percentile means:

  • 90.534% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days
  • 95% of other vulnerabilities are less likely to be exploited

You can use EPSS scores to help prioritize dependency vulnerabilities based on exploit likelihood. Only ~0.5% of vulnerabilities have an EPSS score above 50%. This makes EPSS a powerful tool for prioritization based on exploitation likelihood, especially when used in conjunction with exploitation severity (CVSS). For more information on using EPSS and/or CVSS for vulnerability prioritization, check out FIRST’s EPSS user guide.

This feature is available on GitHub.com today, and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server staring with version 3.17.

Learn more in FIRST’s EPSS User Guide.
Join the discussion within GitHub Community.
Read more about viewing, sorting, and filtering Dependabot alerts in GitHub’s Dependabot docs.

See more

Dependabot version updates now support the bun package manager – [GA]

Developers can now use Dependabot to keep their bun dependencies up to date automatically. For projects that use bun as a package manager, Dependabot Version Updates can now ensure dependencies stay current with the latest releases.

Support for bun security updates will be added in the future.

See more

CodeQL performance and coverage improvements in recent releases

CodeQL is the static analysis engine behind GitHub code scanning, which finds and remediates security issues in your code. The CodeQL engine has become faster, covers 28 more security queries, supports more ecosystems, and can now scan GitHub Actions (public preview)—among various other bug fixes and small improvements.

All of these improvements were automatically rolled out to code scanning users in the past few months. For users of the CodeQL CLI, here are some highlights of the past few CodeQL releases:

  • CodeQL 2.20.4 – 6 February 2025
    • Analysis support for GitHub Actions workflow files is now in public preview, and therefore the use of the actions language (for analysis of GitHub Actions workflows) no longer requires the CODEQL_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURES environment variable to be set.
    • All experimental queries for C#, Java, and Kotlin have been migrated to the default query suite in the CodeQL community packs that are managed by GitHub Security Lab.
  • CodeQL 2.20.3 – 24 January 2025
    • Resolves a security vulnerability where CodeQL databases or logs produced by the CodeQL CLI may contain the environment variables from the time of database creation. This includes any secrets stored in an environment variables. For more information, see the CodeQL CLI security advisory.
  • CodeQL 2.20.2 – 22 January 2025
    • All data flow queries have been standardized on a single data flow library, which may result in differences for JavaScript and TypeScript analysis.
    • CodeQL databases now take 2-3x less space on disk, which makes them faster to transfer and read/manipulate. This is thanks to a new compressed database format.
  • CodeQL 2.20.1 – 9 January 2025
    • CodeQL is now easier to set up and roll out: automatic build command detection with automatic dependency installation for C/C++ is now supported on Ubuntu 24.04.
    • A new Server Side Template Injection query for Python has been released, thanks to a community contribution.
    • Swift 6.0.2 is now supported.
  • CodeQL 2.19.4 – 2 December 2024
  • CodeQL 2.19.3 – 7 November 2024
    • Analysis for .NET 8 and JDK 17 has been improved.
    • The CodeQL Bundle is now available as an artifact that is compressed using Zstandard. This artifact is smaller and faster to decompress than the original, gzip-compressed bundle. The CodeQL bundle is a tar archive containing tools, scripts, and various CodeQL-specific files.
  • CodeQL 2.19.2 – 21 October 2024
    • Analysis of Python apps now has significantly faster extraction and analysis times.
  • CodeQL 2.19.1 – 4 October 2024
    • Java 23 is now supported.
    • A new command, codeql resolve packs, shows each step in the pack search process, including what packs were found in each step.

Detailed changelogs for every CodeQL release are available in the CodeQL documentation, and new CodeQL releases occur roughly every two weeks.

For GitHub Enterprise Server customers: All new functionality from CodeQL releases 2.19.0 through 2.20.3 will be included in GHES 3.16 and the latest patch versions of 3.12-3.15. Functionality from 2.20.3 and later 2.20.X versions will be included in 3.17. If you use an older version of GHES, you can manually upgrade your CodeQL version.

See more

Dependabot no longer supports Python 3.8

As of February 5, 2025, Dependabot no longer supports Python 3.8, which has reached its end-of-life. If you continue to use Python 3.8, Dependabot will not be able to create pull requests to update dependencies. If this affects you, we recommend updating to a supported release of Python. As of February 2025, Python 3.13 is the newest supported release.

View Python’s official documentation for more information about supported releases.

See more

Dependabot now supports pnpm workspace catalogs (GA)

Starting today, Dependabot offers full support for pnpm workspace catalogs.

pnpm workspace catalogs are widely used in monorepos, and improper dependency handling can lead to:

  • Broken dependency trees due to unintended modifications.
  • Install failures in CI environments due to lockfile mismatches.
  • `NoChangeErrors` when workspaces conflict with each other.

Starting today, Dependabot fully supports pnpm workspace catalogs. This means that Dependabot now:

  • Ensures safe, scoped updates for each workspace.
  • Prevents lockfile inconsistencies that break dependency resolution.
  • Improves the reliability of updates in `pnpm` monorepos.

Learn more about Dependabot
Learn more about pnpm catalogs
Join the community discussion to share feedback and tips

See more

Code scanning caches dependencies for Java, Go & C#

GitHub Code Scanning powered by CodeQL now supports dependency caching for Java, Go, and C# projects. This feature ensures that scans can deliver meaningful results even if registries are temporarily unavailable, while also reducing overall scanning time after the cache is established.

Dependency Caching Availability:

  • Default Setup: For repositories using GitHub-hosted runners, dependency caching is automatically enabled for both public and private repositories during scans.
  • Advanced Setup: Users with custom configurations can manually enable dependency caching as needed.

This is now available on github.com.

See more

Organization Private Registry Configuration for Java and C# CodeQL Scans

CodeQL build-mode: none scans can now access private dependencies stored in private registries (e.g. Artifactory) for Java and C# projects. This makes your scans more comprehensive, ensuring you receive all important alerts regardless of where your dependencies are stored.

Previously, build-mode: none code scans with the default setup were unable to fetch code for dependent packages stored in private registries, which could result in incomplete analysis. Now, organization administrators can configure access credentials for private registries at the organization level. This enhancement allows CodeQL scans in child repositories to retrieve all necessary dependencies, enabling comprehensive code analysis when using the code scanning default setup.

This feature is currently in public preview for GitHub Advanced Security customers.

See more

The latest GitHub and GitHub Copilot SOC reports are now available

We are pleased to announce that our most recent SOC reports (1, 2, and 3) are available now and include GitHub Enterprise Cloud for github.com with all new regions like the EU, as well as Copilot Business and Enterprise. These reports are applicable for the 6-month period April 1, 2024 to September 30, 2024 and are available on the GitHub Enterprise Trust Center for our customers.

This represents a significant milestone for GitHub and our customers for multiple reasons:
– Copilot Business and Enterprise are now gaining coverage of control operating effectiveness over the period represented by a Type II report (as opposed to the point-in-time reports represented by the previous Type I reports issued Spring 2024)
– Coverage for Enterprises hosted in either dotcom or the newly launched EU region.
– Future regions launched for GitHub Enterprise Cloud will also be compliant.

These efforts and the culminating SOC 2 Type II reports represent GitHub’s ongoing commitment to provide secure products to our customers, which continues to provide developers the assurance to build software better, together.

Looking forward, bridge letters will be coming mid-January 2025 for the gap period representing October through December 2024. Additionally, the next round of SOC reports covering October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025 will be available to customers in June 2025.

See more

Artifact Attestations now support multiple subjects

Artifact Attestations now supports attesting multiple subjects simultaneously. When the attest-build-provenance or attest-sbom actions create multiple attestations, a single attestation is created with references to each of the supplied subjects, rather than generating separate attestations for each artifact. This reduces the number of attestations that you need to create and manage. We published these changes as new versions of the respective actions. Please update your workflows to reference the new versions in order to leverage the new functionality.

Learn more about using Artifact Attestations to establish provenance for builds

See more

Code scanning now creates alert-related events in audit log

The enterprise and organization-level audit log events are now created when a code scanning alert is created, fixed, dismissed, reopened, or appeared in a new branch:

  • code_scanning.alert_created – a code scanning alert was seen for the first time;
  • code_scanning.alert_appeared_in_branch – an existing code scanning alert appeared in a branch;
  • code_scanning.alert_closed_became_fixed – a code scanning alert was fixed;
  • code_scanning.alert_reappeared – a code scanning alert that was previously fixed reappeared;
  • code_scanning.alert_closed_by_user – a code scanning alert was manually dismissed;
  • code_scanning.alert_reopened_by_user – a code scanning alert that was previously dismissed was reopened.

The new functionality, which will be included in GHES 3.17, provides more insight into the history of a code scanning alert for easier troubleshooting and analysis.

For more information:

See more

Upcoming changes to data retention for Events API, Atom feed, /timeline and /dashboard-feed features

Currently, you are able to query back up to 90 days worth of events from data tables you have access to when reviewing or utilizing specific events features: Events API (including push events), Atom feed, /timeline, or /dashboard-feed. On January 30th, 2025, we will be modifying the window of data retention for these features from 90 days to 30 days.

Why are we making changes?

We are making this change to help GitHub continue to scale for all our users, while continuing to provide existing customers of these features with the ability to still query and view recent important event information.

Which APIs will be impacted in this change?

The relevant APIs that will be affected are:
– /events : List public events
– /networks/{owner}/{repo}/events : List public events for a network of repositories
– /orgs/{org}/events : List public organization events
– /repos/{owner}/{repo}/events : List repository events
– /users/{username}/events : List events for the authenticated user
– /users/{username}/events/orgs/{org} : List organization events for the authenticated user
– /users/{username}/events/public : List public events for a user
– /users/{username}/received_events : List events received by the authenticated user
– /users/{username}/received_events/public : List public events received by a user
– /feeds : Get feeds

When can you expect the changes to occur?

On January 30th, 2025, we will be reducing the window that can be queried across those specified events features from 90 days to 30 days. In advance of that, we will test this change for 24 hours on December 3rd, 2024.

The Dormant Users feature report will also be impacted a result of this change.  As of 1/31/25, users who are 31+ days without activity will fall into the dormant category and would appear in the Dormant Users report.

We recommend leveraging a workflow that uses weekly or daily exports if you require further historical access.

Where can I learn more?

If you have concerns, comments, or feedback, please join us in this Discussion in the GitHub Community.

See more
View more changes