Managing alerts from secret scanning

About the secret scanning alerts page

When you enable secret scanning for a repository or push commits to a repository with secret scanning enabled, GitHub scans the contents for secrets that match patterns defined by service providers and any custom patterns defined in your enterprise, organization, or repository.

When secret scanning detects a secret, GitHub generates an alert. GitHub displays an alert in the Security tab of the repository.

To help you triage alerts more effectively, GitHub separates alerts into two lists:

• High confidence alerts.
• Other alerts.

High confidence alerts list

The "High confidence" alerts list displays alerts that relate to supported patterns and specified custom patterns. This list is always the default view for the alerts page.

Other alerts list

The "Other" alerts list displays alerts that relate to non-provider patterns (such as private keys). These types of alerts have a higher rate of false positives.

In addition, alerts that fall into this category:

• Are limited in quantity to 5000 alerts per repository (this includes open and closed alerts).
• Are not shown in the summary views for security overview, only in the "Secret scanning" view.
• Only have the first five detected locations shown on GitHub for non-provider patterns.

For GitHub to scan for non-provider patterns, you must first enable the feature for your repository or organization. For more information, see "Configuring secret scanning for your repositories."

Viewing alerts

1. On your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, navigate to the main page of the repository.
2. Under the repository name, click Security. If you cannot see the "Security" tab, select the dropdown menu, and then click Security.
   
3. In the left sidebar, under "Vulnerability alerts", click Secret scanning.
4. Optionally, toggle to "Other" to see alerts for non-provider patterns.
5. Under "Secret scanning", click the alert you want to view.

Filtering alerts

You can apply various filters to the alerts list to help you find the alerts you're interested in. You can use the dropdown menus above the alerts list, or input the qualifiers listed in the table into the search bar.

Qualifier	Description
is:open	Displays open alerts.
is:closed	Displays closed alerts.
validity:active	Displays alerts for secrets that are still active. For more information about validity statuses, see "Checking a secret's validity."
validity:inactive	Displays alerts for secrets that are no longer active.
validity:unknown	Displays alerts for secrets where the validity status of the secret is unknown.
secret-type:SECRET-NAME	Displays alerts for a specific secret type, for example, secret-type:github_personal_access_token. For a list of supported secret types, see "Secret scanning patterns."
provider:PROVIDER-NAME	Displays alerts for a specific provider, for example, provider:github. For a list of supported partners, see "Secret scanning patterns."
confidence:high	Displays alerts for high-confidence secrets, which relate to supported secrets and custom patterns. For a list of supported high-confidence patterns, see "Secret scanning patterns."
confidence:other	Displays alerts for non-provider patterns, such as private keys. For a list of supported non-provider patterns, see "Secret scanning patterns."

Evaluating alerts

There are some additional features that can help you to evaluate alerts in order to better prioritize and manage them. You can:

• Check the validity of a secret, to see if the secret is still active. Applies to GitHub tokens only. For more information, see "Checking a secret's validity."
• Review a token's metadata. Applies to GitHub tokens only. For example, to see when the token was last used. For more information, see "Reviewing GitHub token metadata."

Checking a secret's validity

Validity checks help you prioritize alerts by telling you which secrets are active or inactive. An active secret is one that could still be exploited, so these alerts should be reviewed and remediated as a priority.

By default, GitHub checks the validity of GitHub tokens and displays the validitation status of the token in the alert view.

Validity	Status	Result
Active secret	active	GitHub checked with this secret's provider and found that the secret is active
Possibly active secret	unknown	GitHub does not support validation checks for this token type yet
Possibly active secret	unknown	GitHub could not verify this secret
Secret inactive	inactive	You should make sure no unauthorized access has already occurred

You can use the REST API to retrieve a list of the most recent validation status for each of your tokens. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for secret scanning" in the REST API documentation. You can also use webhooks to be notified of activity relating to a secret scanning alert. For more information, see the secret_scanning_alert event in "Webhook events and payloads."

Reviewing GitHub token metadata

In the view for an active GitHub token alert, you can review certain metadata about the token. This metadata may help you identify the token and decide what remediation steps to take.

Tokens, like personal access token and other credentials, are considered personal information. For more information about using GitHub tokens, see GitHub's Privacy Statement and Acceptable Use Policies.

Metadata for GitHub tokens is available for active tokens in any repository with secret scanning enabled. If a token has been revoked or its status cannot be validated, metadata will not be available. GitHub auto-revokes GitHub tokens in public repositories, so metadata for GitHub tokens in public repositories is unlikely to be available. The following metadata is available for active GitHub tokens:

Metadata	Description
Secret name	The name given to the GitHub token by its creator
Secret owner	The GitHub handle of the token's owner
Created on	Date the token was created
Expired on	Date the token expired
Last used on	Date the token was last used
Access	Whether the token has organization access

Fixing alerts

Once a secret has been committed to a repository, you should consider the secret compromised. GitHub recommends the following actions for compromised secrets:

• For a compromised GitHub personal access token, delete the compromised token, create a new token, and update any services that use the old token. For more information, see "Managing your personal access tokens."
  • Identify any actions taken by the compromised token on your enterprise's resources. For more information, see "Identifying audit log events performed by an access token."
• For all other secrets, first verify that the secret committed to GitHub Enterprise Server is valid. If so, create a new secret, update any services that use the old secret, and then delete the old secret.

Closing alerts

1. On your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, navigate to the main page of the repository.

2. Under the repository name, click Security. If you cannot see the "Security" tab, select the dropdown menu, and then click Security.

   

3. In the left sidebar, under "Vulnerability alerts", click Secret scanning.

4. Under "Secret scanning", click the alert you want to view.

5. To dismiss an alert, select the "Close as" dropdown menu and click a reason for resolving an alert.

   

6. Optionally, in the "Comment" field, add a dismissal comment. The dismissal comment will be added to the alert timeline and can be used as justification during auditing and reporting. You can view the history of all dismissed alerts and dismissal comments in the alert timeline. You can also retrieve or set a comment by using the Secret scanning API. The comment is contained in the resolution_comment field. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for secret scanning" in the REST API documentation.

7. Click Close alert.

Configuring notifications for secret scanning alerts

Notifications are different for incremental scans and historical scans.

Incremental scans

When a new secret is detected, GitHub Enterprise Server notifies all users with access to security alerts for the repository according to their notification preferences. These users include:

• Repository administrators
• Security managers
• Users with custom roles with read/write access
• Organization owners and enterprise owners, if they are administrators of repositories where secrets were leaked

You will receive an email notification if:

• You are watching the repository.
• You have enabled notifications for "All Activity", or for custom "Security alerts" on the repository.
• In your notification settings, under "Subscriptions", then under "Watching", you have selected to receive notifications by email.

1. On your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, navigate to the main page of the repository.

2. To start watching the repository, select Watch.

   

3. In the dropdown menu, click All Activity. Alternatively, to only subscribe to security alerts, click Custom, then click Security alerts.

4. Navigate to the notification settings for your personal account. These are available at https://github.com/settings/notifications.

5. On your notification settings page, under "Subscriptions", then under "Watching", select the Notify me dropdown.

6. Select "Email" as a notification option, then click Save.

   

For more information about setting up notification preferences, see "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository" and "Configuring your watch settings for an individual repository."

Historical scans

For historical scans, GitHub Enterprise Server notifies the following users:

• Organization owners, enterprise owners, and security managers—whenever a historical scan is complete, even if no secrets are found.
• Repository administrators, security managers, and users with custom roles with read/write access—whenever a historical scan detects a secret, and according to their notification preferences.

We do not notify commit authors.

For more information about setting up notification preferences, see "Managing security and analysis settings for your repository" and "Configuring your watch settings for an individual repository."

Auditing responses to secret scanning alerts

You can audit the actions taken in response to secret scanning alerts using GitHub tools. For more information, see "Auditing security alerts."