Skip to content

The GitHub Blog

feed🛡️ Securitygithub.blog ↗

7 posts in the catalog

Each feed is checked for new posts. Every post is read, and those that belong here join the catalog. What Trove read and did not keep stays on file, not shown.

github.blogarticle

How bug bounty sharpens one researcher’s security skills

GitHub Bug Bounty spotlight interview with @r31n, a researcher known for GitHub Enterprise Server findings. They describe a source-and-sink approach to mapping trust boundaries, chaining minor bugs (open redirect plus allowlisted SSRF that follows redirects), and confirming a finding only with a working PoC. They also cover using AI for code navigation and PoC scripts, and treating model output as untrusted input.

GitHub Enterprise ServerGitHubHackerOne
SSRFopen redirectXSS+3

Learning, AppSec· 2026-10-22T17:21:30+00:00

github.blogarticle

Staying Evergreen: How we automated secure access and repo hygiene in a shared org

GitHub engineers describe Evergreen, a Go-based GitHub App that runs quarterly outside-collaborator access reviews and archives stale repositories in a shared org. It uses scheduled Actions with repository_dispatch, JSON state files in git as the audit trail, checklist issues (IssueOps) closed to trigger revocation, and custom properties for ownership and exemptions. Design principles include fail-secure/fail-closed revocation, never deleting data, dry-run rollout, Splunk logging, and proactive pacing against GitHub's secondary rate limits.

GitHubGitHub ActionsGo+2
EvergreenIssueOpsfail secure+2

DevSecOps, Identity & Access· 2026-10-15T18:00:00+00:00

github.blogarticle

GitHub’s model for secret detection: Finding more secrets with less noise

GitHub describes its secret scanning pipeline for generic secrets. Regex finds candidates with high recall, then a fine-tuned ModernBERT classifier reads the candidate with its file path, secret type and surrounding code to filter hard negatives such as placeholders, fixtures and checksums. The post covers the training data (product feedback, weak labels, synthetic hard negatives), grouped train/eval splits, and ONNX 8-bit quantization. Reported results against the earlier LLM pipeline: 13% higher precision, 19% higher recall, 11.5% higher owner-weighted acceptance, 86% lower median scan time and over 98% lower serving cost. The speed gain made generic secret detection feasible in push protection.

GitHubModernBERTONNX+1
push protectionhard negatives

DevSecOps, AI Security· 2026-10-13T17:56:33+00:00

github.blogarticle

How one bug bounty researcher chooses the features they investigate

GitHub Bug Bounty spotlight interview with VIP researcher @vaib25vicky, who specializes in authorization and access control findings. They describe a feature-first methodology (deeply explore a feature until something odd surfaces, rather than hunting by bug class), discuss using AI as a productivity aid that still requires manual verification before submission, and note that most high-impact AI-feature bugs reduce to classic authorization issues and weak guardrails. The post also covers GitHub's restructured VIP bounty program (up to $30k+ payouts, invite criteria based on resolved severity counts).

HackerOneGitHub Copilot
vaib25vicky

AppSec, Learning· 2026-10-08T17:02:52+00:00

github.blogarticle

Secret protection must scale with software

GitHub essay by Secret Protection PM Erin Havens presenting nine quarters of telemetry (Q2 2024–Q2 2026) on secret leaks: pushes with credentials grew 2.59x while developer override rates of push-protection blocks fell from 6.63% to 3.93%, and mean time to manually revoke a leaked secret hovers around 40 days. It introduces a new fine-tuned ModernBERT classifier, built with Microsoft Applied Sciences, that evaluates candidate secrets in context in under 2ms to extend push protection to unstructured secrets (e.g. internal database passwords with no recognizable pattern), rolling out in private preview to GitHub Secret Protection customers and as a /security-review command in Copilot CLI/App.

GitHubGitHub Copilot CLIModernBERT+1
ReviewBench

DevSecOps, AI Security· 2026-10-07T17:45:34+00:00

github.blogarticle

Developer policy update: Transparency, state policy, and what’s ahead

GitHub's policy team publishes its H1 2026 Transparency Center data (708 government takedown requests, largely a reporting-methodology change rather than a moderation increase) and recaps the 2026 US state legislative session. It covers California's SB 1000 (AI Transparency Act) and follow-up AB 2713 concerning how "GenAI hosting platform" definitions could sweep in code repositories, age-assurance laws (California AB 1043, Colorado SB 26, Illinois HB 5511), and flags the upcoming DMCA Section 1201 triennial rulemaking, including renewal of the good-faith security-research exemption.

GitHub
California AI Transparency Act (SB 1000)AB 2713AB 853+4

GRC· 2026-09-29T15:00:00+00:00

github.blogwriteup

How we found 24 Android vulnerabilities using our open source AI security agent

GitHub Security Lab describes custom "taskflow" prompts built on their open-source Taskflow Agent to hunt Android app vulnerabilities, reporting 24 findings to date. It walks through two concrete chains: an exported, unprotected MapActivity in OsmAnd that lets any app silently import settings and exfiltrate the user's exact map tile/route coordinates to an attacker server, and a hostname-parsing logic bug plus overly loose cookie-domain check in the Wikipedia Android app that lets a wikipedia:// deeplink load an attacker page (e.g. evil-wikipedia.org) and steal long-lived session cookies for account takeover. The post also candidly notes where LLMs struggle (false positives, mis-estimating severity, missing mitigating factors) versus where they excel (deep knowledge of safe/unsafe API patterns).

AndroidGitHub CopilotSQLite+1
confused deputyOsmAndWikipedia

AI Security, Mobile Security, AppSec· 2026-09-28T19:00:00+00:00