Pin GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs - #5341
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Dan Fiedler (danfiedler-msft) wants to merge 2 commits into
Closed
Pin GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs#5341Dan Fiedler (danfiedler-msft) wants to merge 2 commits into
Dan Fiedler (danfiedler-msft) wants to merge 2 commits into
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Dan Fiedler (danfiedler-msft)
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Mark Cowlishaw (markcowl),
Timothee Guerin (timotheeguerin) and
Jeff Fisher (xirzec)
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August 29, 2026 03:54
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Timothee Guerin (timotheeguerin)
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Aug 31, 2026
Timothee Guerin (timotheeguerin)
enabled auto-merge
August 31, 2026 12:43
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No changes needing a change description found. |
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📦 Package size report✅ No notable package size changes compared to the base branch. 13 package(s) with no notable change
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Go emitter diffBaseline No changes to generated output. Rendered diff: inline on the run summary, or the emitter-diff-go-html artifact. Informational check (core/eng/emitter-diff); does not block the PR. |
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Changes merged in #5353 |
auto-merge was automatically disabled
September 1, 2026 12:50
Pull request was closed
Jialin Huang (JialinHuang803)
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Sep 1, 2026
Every third-party action in our workflows was referenced by a mutable tag (`actions/checkout@v7`). Tags can be retargeted, so a compromised upstream repo silently gets write access to our CI — exactly what happened in the [tj-actions/changed-files](https://www.stepsecurity.io/blog/harden-runner-detection-tj-actions-changed-files-action-is-compromised) and [codfish/semantic-release-action](https://www.stepsecurity.io/blog/supply-chain-compromise-codfish-semantic-release-action) compromises. Every action is now pinned to a full-length commit SHA, with the version kept as a comment so it stays readable and Dependabot can keep bumping it: ```diff - uses: actions/checkout@v7 + uses: actions/checkout@3d3c42e # v7.0.1 ``` Dependabot also gets a 7 day cooldown on the `github-actions` ecosystem, giving the community a window to spot a compromised release before we auto-adopt it. The SHAs resolve to the same commits the tags pointed at, so there is no behavioral change. Generated `*.lock.yml` agentic workflows are untouched — `gh-aw` already emits pinned SHAs there. Redo of Azure#5341, which went stale with conflicts. See https://aka.ms/action-pinning. Co-authored-by: github-actions[bot] <github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
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Summary
This PR pins GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs for improved security and reproducibility and adds a 7 day cooldown to Dependabot configuration for GitHub Actions. This work is described in more detail at https://aka.ms/action-pinning.
Why?
Pinning actions to commit SHAs prevents supply-chain attacks where a tag could be moved to point to malicious code. This is a recommended security best practice per the GitHub Actions security hardening guide.
This change mitigates the risk of tag retargeting to malicious code as seen in incidents like the tj-actions/changed-files action compromise or codfish/semantic-release-action compromise and improves the integrity and reproducibility of the CI/CD pipeline.
What changed?
Action pinning: Third-party action references in
.github/workflows/that used mutable tag-based references (e.g.,actions/checkout@v4) have been updated to full-length commit SHAs with a version comment (e.g.,actions/checkout@<sha> # v4) using the pinact tool. References that were already pinned to a SHA, or that used immutable release tags, were left unchanged.Dependabot configuration:
.github/dependabot.ymlhas been updated to ensure agithub-actionspackage-ecosystem section is present with acooldownconfiguration (default-days: 7). If the file did not exist, it was created. If agithub-actionssection already existed, only thecooldownblock was added or itsdefault-daysvalue was increased to 7 if it was lower. The 7-day cooldown provides a window for the community to detect and report compromised releases before they are automatically proposed as updates, reducing exposure to supply-chain attacks via newly published malicious versions.Is this safe to merge?
Yes. The pinned SHAs correspond to the same commits that the existing tags pointed to. No behavioral changes in action execution are introduced. You can verify the pinned SHA value using the GitHub REST API (e.g., the commit hash for
actions/checkout@v7can be found in theshaproperty in the JSON response forGET https://api.github.com/repos/actions/checkout/commits/v7).Additional Information
For more information, please see https://aka.ms/action-pinning