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Find and fix Actions workflows vulnerabilities with CodeQL (Public Preview)

You can now enable code scanning in your GitHub Actions workflow files. By opting-in to this feature, you can enhance the security of repositories using GitHub Actions.
Actions analysis support includes a set of CodeQL queries developed by the GitHub Security Lab to capture common misconfigurations of workflow files that can lead to security vulnerabilities. You can now easily run these queries as part of Code Scanning’s default or advanced setup and use Copilot Autofix to get remediation suggestions on your findings.

You can opt-in to the public preview by selecting the “GitHub Actions” language via code scanning default setup, or by adding the actions language to your existing advanced setup. New repositories onboarding to default setup after today will start analyzing Actions workflows right away. Existing repositories will not be automatically opted-in as part of the public preview.

Learn more about configuring default setup for code scanning, securing your use of Actions, and vulnerabilities identified with CodeQL.

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Copilot Autofix can now be generated with the REST API (Public Preview)

New REST API endpoints for code scanning allow you to request the generation of Copilot Autofix for code scanning alerts. These endpoints also provide the Autofix generation status, along with metadata and AI-generated descriptions for the fixes, and enable you to apply Autofix to a branch. This functionality can be particularly useful for addressing security vulnerabilities programmatically and for tracking the status of alerts with Copilot Autofixes in your system.

To generate Copilot Autofix, call the POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/code-scanning/alerts/{number}/autofix endpoint.
Additionally, you can retrieve the Autofix and commit it by using the GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/code-scanning/alerts/{number}/autofix endpoint followed by POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/code-scanning/alerts/{number}/autofix/commits.

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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Enhanced CodeQL pull request alerts report

The metrics overview for CodeQL pull request alerts now includes enhanced tracking and reporting mechanisms, resulting in greater accuracy and more CodeQL pull request alerts and Copilot Autofixes displayed on the dashboard.

These changes retroactively affect the dashboard numbers, allowing you to effectively monitor your organization’s security posture.

With these insights, you can proactively identify and address security risks before they reach your default branch. The metrics overview for CodeQL pull request alerts helps you understand how effectively CodeQL prevents vulnerabilities in your organization. You can use these metrics to easily identify the repositories where action is needed to mitigate security risks.

The change is now generally available on GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Learn more about security overview and code scanning.

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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:
– Learn more about code scanning
– Learn more about audit log events for your enterprise
– Learn more about audit log events for your organization

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Improved support for labeled Actions runners in CodeQL code scanning

When configuring CodeQL security analysis using code scanning’s default setup, you can now specify whether to run the analysis on a standard GitHub-hosted runner, a larger GitHub-hosted runner, or a self-hosted runner. Previously, support for larger GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners was limited to those with the code-scanning custom label. Now, you can specify any custom label, ensuring the analysis runs on the desired machine(s).

For example, using a custom label you are able to assign more powerful runners to critical repositories for faster analyses, better spread the workload over GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners, or run the analysis on a particular platform (like macOS).

The new setting is available today on GitHub.com, and can be configured both at the repository level and within code security configurations for deployments at scale. This new setting will also be included in GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.16.

Learn more about configuring default setup for code scanning.

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Expanded flexibility and control for managing the security manager role

For organization owners, managing the security manager role is now easier and more flexible. These updates empower you to tailor security responsibilities and streamline role assignments to fit your needs:

  1. Assign the security manager role to individual users: The security manager role can now be assigned directly to individual users, in addition to teams. This added flexibility ensures security responsibilities are allocated precisely where needed.
  2. Streamlined role management in organization settings: Security manager assignment and configuration is now part of Settings > Organization roles at the organization level. This relocation centralizes and simplifies role management, making it intuitive to oversee security managers alongside other organizational roles.

Security manager assignment modal on the Organization roles - Role assignments page

Building on recent improvements

The addition of custom organization roles with repository permissions takes flexibility to the next level. With these updates, you can customize security roles to balance the right level of responsibility and access for your team. Here’s how you can leverage these features to meet your specific requirements:

  1. Craft a security manager role with fewer permissions: The addition of repository permissions to custom organization roles means you can build custom security roles with a subset of security manager permissions, such as:
    • View secret scanning
    • Dismiss secret scanning
    • View code scanning
    • Dismiss code scanning
    • Delete code scanning analyses
    • View Dependabot alerts
    • Dismiss Dependabot alerts

    This lets you assign security responsibilities without granting the full access of a security manager role.

  2. Expand the security manager role with additional permissions: Using custom organization roles, you can enhance the security manager role by adding additional organization-level or repository-specific permissions. For example, you can grant audit log access or other highly requested capabilities to create a tailored role that fits your team’s specific needs.

User with security manager role and custom auditor role assigned

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

Learn more about the security manager role, custom organization roles and send us your feedback

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CSV export for enterprise-level security overview

You can now export security data for offline analysis, reporting, and archival purposes on the enterprise-level security overview pages. This includes:

  • Enterprise-level overview dashboard: Export alert-level data for all your scanning tools—including third-party scanning tools.
  • Enterprise-level risk page: Export repository-level data with aggregated counts of security alerts per repository for code scanning, Dependabot, and secret scanning.
  • Enterprise-level coverage page: Export repository-level data showing the enablement state for all Dependabot, code scanning, and secret scanning features.

New Export CSV button highlighted on the overview dashboard on the Security tab at the enterprise level

Just like at the organization level, exports will respect all filters you’ve applied to the page, making it easy to for you to tailor downloads to your specific needs. Whether you’re focused on enterprise-wide insights or repository-level details, the data is now at your fingertips.

You can download all data where you have an appropriate level of access.

Learn more about security overview and send us your feedback

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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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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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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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CodeQL 2.19.0: TypeScript 5.6 and Go 1.23 support, new queries for JavaScript and Ruby

CodeQL version 2.19.0 has been released and has now been rolled out to code scanning users on GitHub.com. CodeQL is the static analysis engine that powers GitHub code scanning.

Important changes by version include:

  • CodeQL 2.18.2
    • Support for scanning Java codebases without needing a build is generally available.
    • The Python py/cookie-injection query, which finds instances of cookies being constructed from user input, is now part of the main query pack.
    • One new query for Ruby rb/weak-sensitive-data-hashing, to detect cases where sensitive data is hashed using a weak cryptographic hashing algorithm.
  • CodeQL 2.18.3
    • New C# models for local sources from System.IO.Path.GetTempPath and System.Environment.GetFolderPath.
  • CodeQL 2.18.4
    • Support for scanning C# codebases without needing a build is generally available.
    • Support for Go 1.23.
  • CodeQL 2.19.0
    • Support for TypeScript 5.6.
    • One new query for JavaScript js/actions/actions-artifact-leak to detect GitHub Actions artifacts that may leak the GITHUB_TOKEN token.
    • A 13.7% evaluator speed improvement over CodeQL 2.17.0 release.

For a full list of changes, please refer to the complete changelog for versions 2.18.2, 2.18.3, 2.18.4 and 2.19.0.

All new functionality from 2.18.Z releases will be included in GHES 3.15, while functionality from 2.19.0 will be included in GHES 3.16. If you use GHES 3.14 or older, you can upgrade your CodeQL version.

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Enhanced security overview dashboard – detection, remediation, and prevention at the forefront

Now, you can view Prevention metrics alongside Detection and Remediation metrics and in an enhanced security overview dashboard. This update is available at both the organization and enterprise levels.

New prevention tab on the security overview dashboard

New to the dashboard, the Prevention insights tab highlights CodeQL pull requests alerts and will soon include secret scanning push protection insights. It’s designed to help you shift from merely responding to vulnerabilities to actively preventing them, the ultimate goal in application security. With this dashboard, you and your team can proactively keep vulnerabilities at bay, successfully blocking threats before they ever reach production.

Deep dive into the CodeQL pull request alerts

For a deeper analysis, the new CodeQL pull request alerts report is also available at both the organization and enterprise levels. This report allows you to:

  • Track historical metrics for CodeQL pull request alerts
  • Monitor code as it progresses from feature branches to the default branch
  • Analyze metrics by CodeQL rule, autofix status, and repository

The enhanced dashboard is now generally available on GitHub Enterprise Cloud and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.16.

Learn more about pull request alerts and join the discussion within the GitHub Community

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Now available for free on all public repositories: Copilot Autofix for CodeQL code scanning alerts

Now you can remediate existing security issues in your public repositories faster with Copilot Autofix for CodeQL alerts. Following our general availability release for all Advanced Security customers, Copilot Autofix for CodeQL alerts is now generally available (GA) for all public repositories, for free.

Powered by GitHub Copilot, this feature provides automatic fixes for vulnerabilities found by CodeQL, both on pull requests and for historical alerts that already exist in a codebase.

Importantly, you stay in full control of your codebase: Copilot Autofix will try and suggest fixes for CodeQL alerts in pull requests, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide whether you wish to accept Copilot’s suggestion wholly, partially, or not at all. The same applies to historical alerts in a codebase: you can request an autofix from Copilot, then review it, and decide whether you want to open a PR with the fix suggestion or commit straight to the affected branch (or neither).

Example of Copilot Autofix generation on the alert page

Copilot Autofix is available for all public repositories that use code scanning CodeQL, and is enabled by default for alerts on PRs. It does not generate additional notifications. If you would like to enable Copilot Autofix on your organization’s private repositories, please have a look at this blog post where we announce Autofix for GitHub Advanced Security.

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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CSV exports for the CodeQL pull request alerts report

New Export CSV button highlighted on the CodeQL pull request alerts report

You can now export data from the CodeQL pull request alerts report in CSV format, enabling you to analyze prevention and autofix metrics offline or archive the data for future use. This functionality is available at both the organization and enterprise levels. Exports will respect all filters applied, allowing you to focus on the specific data most relevant to your needs. You can download all data where you have an appropriate level of access.

Learn more about tracking metrics on CodeQL pull request alerts and join the discussion within the GitHub Community.

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