code-scanning

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Delete stale code scanning configurations to close outdated alerts

Code scanning configurations can now be deleted from the code scanning alert page. This could be used to delete stale configurations causing alerts to remain open, or delete old configurations which are no longer used.

Code scanning can be configured to use different tools, target different languages, or even analyze different parts of the codebase in the same repository. In certain circumstances more than one of these configurations may produce the same alert. However, if one of the configurations is no longer used and becomes 'stale' you may find that the alert is fixed in one configuration but not in the stale configuration, which is potentially confusing. Today we are releasing a new feature that allows you to easily delete stale configurations which cause alerts to remain open after they've been fixed.

In the code scanning alert page, the counter in the 'Affected branches' sidebar shows the number of configurations for the branch. Click a branch to view the configuration details, and delete configurations as required. A configuration is deleted for a branch, so may have an impact on the status of other alerts on the same branch. When a configuration is deleted, a timeline entry is recorded on the alert, and repositories in an organization also record an audit log entry. If a configuration is deleted by mistake, re-run the analysis to update the alert and reinstate the configuration.

Delete code scanning configurations

Read more about removing stale code scanning configurations and alerts.

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Use multi-repository variant analysis (beta) to run CodeQL queries at scale

Today we have released multi-repository variant analysis for CodeQL in public beta to help the OSS security community power up their research with CodeQL.

CodeQL is the static code analysis engine that powers GitHub code scanning. Out of the box, CodeQL is able to find many different types of security vulnerability and flag them up in pull requests.

But one of CodeQL’s superpowers is its versatility and customizability: you can use it to find virtually any pattern in source code. As such, it’s a great tool for finding new types of vulnerabilities – once you’ve identified an interesting pattern, model it as a CodeQL query, and then run it against your repository to find all occurrences of that pattern! But most vulnerabilities are relevant to many codebases. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could easily run your query against many repos at the same time? Well, now you can with multi-repository variant analysis — which we’ve just shipped in public beta!

Screenshot 2023-02-22 at 16 39 39

This new feature will allow security researchers to run CodeQL analyses against large numbers of repos, straight from the CodeQL extension for VS Code, making it possible to identify new types of security vulnerabilities in the most popular open-source codebases.

Checkout the CodeQL for VS Code documentation to get learn how to get started with multi-repository variant analysis. We'd also love to hear your feedback on this GitHub community discussion.

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Code scanning default setup on the security coverage page (public beta)

Code scanning default setup can now be easily enabled for a single repository from the slide-out panel on your organization's "Security Coverage" page, without needing to navigate to the repository's "Settings" tab.

The feature automatically detects the languages in your repository and enables analysis for pull requests and pushes, without requiring you to commit a workflow file. Default setup currently supports JavaScript, Python, and Ruby, with more languages to come. The feature is available for repositories using GitHub Actions and can be accessed by organization owners, repository administrators and security managers. Expect one-click enablement functionality for all organization repositories to be rolled out next.

This has shipped as a public beta to GitHub.com and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.9.

code scanning on the slide-out enablement panel on the security coverage page

Learn more about automatically setting up code scanning for a repository and send us your feedback

Learn more about GitHub Advanced Security

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Code scanning adds support for Kotlin 1.8.0 analysis (beta)

Back in November 2022 we announced the public beta for Kotlin analysis. We continue to invest in Kotlin and we now support Kotlin 1.8.0 analysis in beta.

If you have any feedback or questions, please use this discussion thread or open an issue in the open source CodeQL repository if you encounter any problems.

Kotlin beta support is available by default in GitHub.com code scanning, the CodeQL CLI, and the CodeQL extension for VS Code. GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.9 will include this beta release.

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CodeQL code scanning is now 16% faster

CodeQL is the engine that powers GitHub code scanning, used by more than 100,000 repositories to catch security vulnerabilities before they cause issues in deployments.

CodeQL is fully integrated into the Pull Request workflow, so it has to be as fast as possible to keep developers unblocked.

We're constantly working on performance improvements, from incremental optimizations to fundamental research, all with the goal of speeding up the nearly 150,000 checks we run every single day, without compromising our best-in-class precision and low false-positive rate.

With the recent release of CodeQL version 2.12, we looked back at the performance gains compared to version 2.11 (September 2022) to see how far we've come. We compared the analysis time for the same 55,000 repositories on GitHub.com and found an average improvement of 15.7% across all supported languages:

codeql performance 2 11 2 12 improvement

Users on GitHub.com automatically run the latest CodeQL version. Customers on GitHub Enterprise Server can update by following the sync processes explained here.

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Migration of CodeQL CLI Docs to GitHub Docs site

Following feedback from code scanning users, we've moved documentation about the CodeQL CLI from codeql.github.com to docs.github.com, the main GitHub Docs site.

You can now find the articles under the “Using the CodeQL CLI” and “CodeQL CLI reference” categories, which correspond to the categories on the original site. We’ve updated each of the original articles on codeql.github.com with links to the new location of the article and to each subsection, so that if you go to the old location you can easily find the information you need.

The source files now exist in Markdown format in the public, open-source docs repository. If you would like to contribute, you can consult and follow the steps listed in the GitHub Docs contributing guide.

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Code scanning can be set up not to fail a pull request check

Code scanning can now be set up to never cause a pull request check failure.

By default, any code scanning alerts with a security-severity of critical or high will cause a pull request check failure.
You can specify which security-severity level for code scanning results should cause the code scanning check to fail, including None, by going to the Code security and Analysis tab in the repository settings.

Screenshot code-scanning-settings

This has shipped to GitHub.com and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.9. Learn more about severity levels for security alerts and Code scanning results check failures on pull requests.

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Code scanning: CodeQL Action v1 is now deprecated

On March 30, 2022, we released CodeQL Action v2, which runs on the Node.js 16 runtime. In April 2022, we announced that CodeQL Action v1 would be deprecated at the same time as GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) 3.3.
This deprecation period has elapsed and starting January 18, 2023, CodeQL Action v1 is now discontinued.
It will no longer be updated or supported, and while we will not be deleting it except in the case of a security vulnerability, workflows using it may eventually break.
New CodeQL analysis capabilities will only be available to users of v2.

For more information about this deprecation, please see the original deprecation announcement from April 2022.

How does this affect me?

If you use code scanning with CodeQL on any of the following platforms, you should update your workflow file(s) to use CodeQL Action v2 as soon as possible:

  • GitHub.com (including open source repositories, users of GitHub Teams and GitHub Enterprise Cloud)
  • GHES 3.4.13 and later

Users of GHES 3.4.12 or earlier: please read this section in the original deprecation announcement.

What do I need to change in my workflow?

To upgrade to the CodeQL Action v2, open your CodeQL workflow file(s) in the .github/workflows directory of your repository and look for references to:

  • github/codeql-action/init@v1
  • github/codeql-action/autobuild@v1
  • github/codeql-action/analyze@v1
  • github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v1

These entries need to be replaced with their v2 equivalents:

  • github/codeql-action/init@v2
  • github/codeql-action/autobuild@v2
  • github/codeql-action/analyze@v2
  • github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v2

If you use a pinned version of the CodeQL Action in your workflows, for example github/codeql-action/init@32be38e, check the latest Actions workflow run summary on your repository.
If you see a warning stating that you are running CodeQL Action v1, then please update your workflow to reference v2 or alternatively the latest github/codeql-action commit tagged v2.

Can I use Dependabot to help me with this upgrade?

All users on GitHub.com, and GHES customers using GitHub Advanced Security with a local copy of github/codeql-action, can use Dependabot to automatically upgrade their Actions dependencies.
For more details on how to set this up, please see this page.

GHES customers should also make sure:

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Code scanning can be set up more easily without committing a workflow file to the repository

Code scanning can now be easily setup with a few button clicks, and without committing a workflow file to the repository.

Code scanning's new default setup feature automatically finds and sets up the best CodeQL configuration for your repository. This will detect the languages in the repository and enable CodeQL analysis for every pull request and every push to the default branch and any protected branches. Default setup currently supports analysis of JavaScript (including TypeScript), Python, and Ruby code. More languages will be supported soon, and all other languages supported by CodeQL continue to work using a GitHub Actions workflow file.

The new default setup feature is available for CodeQL on repositories that use GitHub Actions. You can use default setup on your repository's "Settings" tab under "Code security and analysis" (accessible by repository admins and security managers).

Screenshot of code scanning's new _default setup_

The options to set up code scanning using an Actions workflow file or through API upload from 3rd party CI/CD systems remain supported and are unchanged. This more advanced setup method can be useful if you need to alter the default configuration, for example to include custom query packs. Default setup configurations can also be converted to advanced setups if your analysis requirements change.

Default setup is currently available at the repository level. We are actively working on future features at the organization level so you can easily set up code scanning at scale across large numbers of repositories.

This has shipped to GitHub.com and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.9. To learn more, read the documentation on setting up code scanning for a repository.

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Updated timeline for the deprecation of CodeQL Action v1

The deprecation date for the CodeQL Action v1 is shifting. Initially, this was December 2022, and now it is January 2023. This change follows the updated timeline on the deprecation of GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) 3.3.

In January 2023, the CodeQL Action v1 will be officially deprecated (alongside GHES 3.3). GitHub Action workflows that refer to v1 of the CodeQL Action will continue to work, but no new analysis capabilities will be released to v1. New CodeQL analysis capabilities will only be available to users of v2. For more information about this deprecation and detailed upgrade instructions, please see the original deprecation announcement from April 2022.

All users of GitHub code scanning (which by default uses the CodeQL analysis engine) on GitHub Actions on the following platforms should update their workflow files:

Environments in which CodeQL runs in CI/CD systems other than GitHub Actions are not affected by this deprecation.

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Code scanning organization-level REST API is available for public repositories

GitHub organizations can now use the code scanning organization-level API endpoint to retrieve code scanning alerts on public repositories; this no longer requires a GitHub Advanced Security license. This new endpoint supplements the existing repository-level endpoint.

Learn more about the code scanning organization-level REST API.

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CodeQL code scanning launches Kotlin analysis support (beta)

Starting today, GitHub code scanning includes beta support for analyzing code written in Kotlin, powered by the CodeQL engine.

Kotlin is a key programming language used in the creation of Android mobile applications, and is an increasingly popular choice for new projects, augmenting or even replacing Java. To help organisations and open source developers find potential vulnerabilities in their code, we’ve added Kotlin support (beta) to the CodeQL engine that powers GitHub code scanning. CodeQL now natively supports Kotlin, as well as mixed Java and Kotlin projects. Set up code scanning on your repositories today to receive actionable security alerts right on your pull-requests. To enable Kotlin analysis on a repository, configure the code scanning workflow languages to include java. If you have any feedback or questions, please use this discussion thread or open an issue if you encounter any problems.

Kotlin support is an extension of our existing Java support, and benefits from all of our existing CodeQL queries for Java, for both mobile and server-side applications. We’ve also improved and added a range of mobile-specific queries, covering issues such as handling of Intents, Webview validation problems, fragment injection and more.

CodeQL support for Kotlin has already been used to identify novel real-world vulnerabilities in popular apps, from task management to productivity platforms. You can watch the GitHub Universe talk on how CodeQL was used to identify vulnerabilities like these here.

Kotlin beta support is available by default in GitHub.com code scanning, the CodeQL CLI, and the CodeQL extension for VS Code. GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.8 will include this beta release.

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Filter code scanning API results by alert severity

You can now filter results from the code scanning REST API based on alert severity. Use the parameter severity to return only code scanning alerts with a specific severity. This is available at the repository and organization level.

This feature is available on GitHub.com, and will also be included in GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.8.

Read more about the code scanning API

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CodeQL code scanning launches Ruby analysis support in GA

Last year, we launched Ruby analysis support in beta for GitHub code scanning. Today, we're announcing the general availability of this feature — covering even more vulnerabilities in Ruby code.

Ruby is part of the top 10 most popular languages on GitHub today. In the past year alone, code scanning (powered by the CodeQL engine) helped Ruby developers resolve more than 4,000 security issues. Set up code scanning on your repositories today and receive actionable security alerts right on your pull-requests.

Since shipping in beta, our Ruby analysis has more than doubled the number of common weaknesses (CWEs) that it can detect. A total of 30 rules check your code for a range of vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting (XSS), regular expression denial-of-service (ReDoS), SQL injection, and more. Additional library and framework coverage for Ruby-on-Rails ensures that web service developers get even more precise results. We currently support all common Ruby versions, up to and including 3.1. Check out the documentation for more details on compatibility.

Ruby support is available by default in GitHub.com code scanning, the CodeQL CLI, and the CodeQL extension for VS Code. GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.4 shipped with Ruby (beta) support, and GHES 3.8 will include this GA release.

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Code scanning now supports using CodeQL packs on GitHub.com and GHES

CodeQL comes with a built-in package manager that helps you share and manage custom queries. Last year, we announced the public beta of CodeQL packaging — including direct integration into GitHub code scanning. This makes it easier to roll out custom queries to your repositories and gives you full control over exactly which queries are run.

This functionality will soon be released for users of GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES): it will be available with GHES 3.7. This release also includes support for using packs that are published to GitHub Container Registries (GHCR) hosted on GHES.

How do I use CodeQL query packs in code scanning?

To use CodeQL query packs in code scanning, specify a with: packs: entry in the uses: github/codeql-action/init@v2 section of your code scanning workflow. By default code scanning downloads packs the from GHCR on GitHub.com, so if you want to run one of the standard CodeQL query packs or any other public CodeQL query pack, then simply include the pack scope/name and version requirements here. You can find the full documentation here.

If you want to run packs from the GHCR on GHES, then you need to tell code scanning how to access and authenticate to the appropriate registry. For an example of how to do this in your code scanning workflow, see Downloading CodeQL packs from GitHub Enterprise Server in the GitHub documentation.

How do I publish my own CodeQL packs?

You can publish you own CodeQL packs using the CodeQL CLI. By default, the CodeQL CLI publishes packs to the GHCR on GitHub.com. If you want to publish packs to the GHCR associated with your instance of GHES, you need to tell the CodeQL CLI how to access and authenticate to the registry you want to work with. For a full example of how to specify these details, see Working with CodeQL packs on GitHub Enterprise Server in the CodeQL CLI documentation.

Where can I find more information about CodeQL packaging and code scanning?

This changelog post only provides a brief summary of how you can use CodeQL packs in code scanning. For more information, see:

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