About supply chain security - GitHub Enterprise Cloud Docs (original) (raw)

GitHub helps you secure your supply chain, from understanding the dependencies in your environment, to knowing about vulnerabilities in those dependencies, and patching them.

About supply chain security at GitHub

When developing a software project, you likely use other software to build and run your application, such as open-source libraries, frameworks or other tools. These resources are collectively referred to as your “dependencies”, because your project depends on them to function properly. Your project could rely on hundreds of these dependencies, forming what is known as your "supply chain".

Your supply chain can pose a security problem. If one of your dependencies has a known security weakness or a bug, malicious actors could exploit this vulnerability to, for example, insert malicious code ("malware"), steal sensitive data, or cause some other type of disruption to your project. This type of threat is called a "supply chain attack". Having vulnerable dependencies in your supply chain compromises the security of your own project, and you put your users at risk, too.

One of the most important things you can do to protect your supply chain is to patch your vulnerable dependencies and replace any malware.

You add dependencies directly to your supply chain when you specify them in a manifest file or a lockfile. Dependencies can also be included transitively, that is, even if you don’t specify a particular dependency, but a dependency of yours uses it, then you’re also dependent on that dependency.

GitHub offers a range of features to help you understand the dependencies in your environment, know about vulnerabilities in those dependencies, and patch them.

The supply chain features on GitHub are:

The dependency graph is central to supply chain security. The dependency graph identifies all upstream dependencies and public downstream dependents of a repository or package. Your repository’s dependency graph tracks and displays its dependencies and some of their properties, like vulnerability information.

Other supply chain features on GitHub rely on the information provided by the dependency graph.

Dependabot version updates don't use the dependency graph and rely on the semantic versioning of dependencies instead. Dependabot version updates help you keep your dependencies updated, even when they don’t have any vulnerabilities.

For best practice guides on end-to-end supply chain security including the protection of personal accounts, code, and build processes, see Securing your end-to-end supply chain.

Feature overview

What is the dependency graph?

To generate the dependency graph, GitHub looks at a repository’s explicit dependencies declared in the manifest and lockfiles. When enabled, the dependency graph automatically parses all known package manifest files in the repository, and uses this to construct a graph with known dependency names and versions.

Additionally, you can use the dependency submission API to submit dependencies from the package manager or ecosystem of your choice, even if the ecosystem is not supported by dependency graph for manifest or lock file analysis. Dependencies submitted to a project using the dependency submission API will show which detector was used for their submission and when they were submitted. For more information on the dependency submission API, see Using the dependency submission API.

For more information about the dependency graph, see About the dependency graph.

What is dependency review?

Dependency review helps reviewers and contributors understand dependency changes and their security impact in every pull request.

For more information about dependency review, see About dependency review.

What is Dependabot?

Dependabot keeps your dependencies up to date by informing you of any security vulnerabilities in your dependencies and automatically opening pull requests to upgrade your dependencies. Dependabot pull requests will target the next available secure version when a Dependabot alert is triggered, or to the latest version when a release is published.

The term "Dependabot" encompasses the following features:

Pull requests opened by Dependabot can trigger workflows that run actions. For more information, see Automating Dependabot with GitHub Actions.

By default:

For more information, see About Dependabot on GitHub Actions runners.

Dependabot security updates can fix vulnerable dependencies in GitHub Actions. When security updates are enabled, Dependabot will automatically raise a pull request to update vulnerable GitHub Actions used in your workflows to the minimum patched version. For more information, see About Dependabot security updates.

What are Dependabot alerts?

Dependabot alerts highlight repositories affected by a newly discovered vulnerability based on the dependency graph and the GitHub Advisory Database, which contains advisories for known vulnerabilities.

For more information, see About Dependabot alerts.

What are Dependabot updates?

There are two types of Dependabot updates: Dependabot security updates and version updates. Dependabot generates automatic pull requests to update your dependencies in both cases, but there are several differences.

Dependabot security updates:

Dependabot version updates:

For more information about Dependabot updates, see About Dependabot security updates and About Dependabot version updates.

Feature availability

Public repositories:

Private repositories:

Any repository type: