GitHub-Advanced-Security GitHub Advanced Security GHAS Exam Questions and Answers

Validity checks, also calledsecret validation, allow GitHub to check if a detected secret isstill active. If verified as live, the alert is marked as"valid", allowing security teams to prioritize the most critical leaks.

Push protectionblockssecrets but does not check their validity. Custom patterns are user-defined and do not include live checks.

GitHub automatically closes a code scanning alert when the vulnerable code is fixedin the same branch where the alert was generated, usually via acommit inside a pull request. Simply clicking or triaging an alert does not resolve it. The alert is re-evaluated after each push to the branch, and if the issue no longer exists, it is marked as resolved.

Validity checks— where GitHub verifies if a secret is still active — are available forpartner patternsonly. These are secrets issued by GitHub's trusted partners (like AWS, Slack, etc.) and have APIs for GitHub to validate token activity status.

Custom patterns and high entropy patterns donotsupport automated validity checks.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

Dependency review is triggered by specific events in GitHub workflows:​

pull_request: When a pull request is opened, synchronized, or reopened, GitHub can analyze the changes in dependencies and provide a dependency review.​

workflow_dispatch: This manual trigger allows users to initiate workflows, including those that perform dependency reviews.​

The trigger and commit options are not recognized GitHub Actions events and would not initiate a dependency review.​

The best proactive control ispush protection. It scans for secretsduring a git pushand blocks the commitbeforeit enters the repository.

Other options (like CODEOWNERS or security managers) help with oversight but do not prevent secret leaks.

Making a repo public would increase the risk, not reduce it.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

In the advanced setup for CodeQL code scanning, GitHub generates a workflow file named codeql-analysis.yml. This file is located in the .github/workflows directory of your repository. It defines the configuration for the CodeQL analysis, including the languages to analyze, the events that trigger the analysis, and the steps to perform during the workflow.​

When using a SARIF-compatible tool within GitHub Actions, it's necessary to explicitly add a step in your workflow to upload the analysis results. This is typically done using the upload-sarif action, which takes the SARIF file generated by your tool and uploads it to GitHub for processing and display in the Security tab. Without this step, the results won't be available in GitHub's code scanning interface.​

Using theCustomsetting allows you to subscribe to specific event types, such as Dependabot alerts or vulnerability notifications, without being overwhelmed by all repository activity. This is essential for repository maintainers who need fine-grained control over what kinds of events trigger notifications.

This setting is configurable per repository and allows users to stay aware of critical issues while minimizing notification noise.

Ifautobuildfails (which attempts to automatically detect how to build your project), you shoulddisable itin your workflow andreplace it with explicit build commands, using steps like run: make or run: ./gradlew build.

This ensures CodeQL can still extract and analyze the code correctly.

When integrating CodeQL outside of GitHub Actions (e.g., in Jenkins, CircleCI):

Install the CLI: Needed to run CodeQL commands.

Analyze code: Perform the CodeQL analysis on your project with the CLI.

Upload scan results: Export the results in SARIF format and use GitHub’s API to upload them to your repo’s security tab.

You don’t need to write custom queries unless extending functionality. “Processing alerts” happens after GitHub receives the results.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

In private repositories, users with write access can fix code scanning alerts. They can do this by committing changes that address the issues identified by the code scanning tools. This level of access ensures that only trusted contributors can modify the code to resolve potential security vulnerabilities.​

GitHub Docs

Users with read or triage roles do not have the necessary permissions to make code changes, and the security manager role is primarily focused on managing security settings rather than directly modifying code.​

You can customize CodeQL scanning by including additionalquery packsor by specifying individualqueries:

Packs: These are reusable collections of CodeQL queries bundled into a single package.

Queries: You can point to specific files or directories containing .ql queries to include in the analysis.

github/codeql refers to a pack by name but is not a method or field. Scope is not a valid field used for configuration in this context.

For compiled languages, CodeQL performs extraction bymonitoring the normal build process. This means it watches your usual build commands (like make, javac, or dotnet build) and extracts the relevant data from the actual build steps being executed. CodeQL uses this information to construct a semantic database of the application.

This approach ensures that CodeQL captures a precise, real-world representation of the code and its behavior as it is compiled, including platform-specific configurations or conditional logic used during build.

In aquery suite(a .qls file), the **query** key is used to specify the paths to one or more .ql files that should be included in the suite.

Example:

- query: path/to/query.ql

qls is the file format.

qlpack is used for packaging queries, not in suite syntax.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

Dependabot alerts are generated based on data from various sources:​

National Vulnerability Database (NVD): A comprehensive repository of known vulnerabilities, which GitHub integrates into its advisory database.​

GitHub Docs

Security Advisories Reported on GitHub: GitHub allows maintainers and security researchers to report and discuss vulnerabilities, which are then included in the advisory database.​

The dependency graph and manifest/lock files are tools used by GitHub to determine which dependencies are present in a repository but are not sources of vulnerability disclosures themselves.​

A security policy is defined by a SECURITY.md file in the root of your repository or .github/ directory. This file informs contributors and security researchers about how to responsibly report vulnerabilities. It improves your project’s transparency and ensures timely communication and mitigation of any reported issues.

Adding this file also enables a “Report a vulnerability” button in the repository’s Security tab.

Secret scanning is a feature provided by GitHub that scans the contents of your GitHub repositories for known types of secrets, such as API keys and tokens. It operates within the GitHub environment and does not scan external systems, services, or repositories outside of GitHub. Its primary function is to prevent the accidental exposure of sensitive information within your GitHub-hosted code.​

To create or modify acode scanning workflow file(typically under .github/workflows/codeql-analysis.yml), you must haveWriteaccess to the repository.

Write permission allows you to commit the workflow file, which is required to run or configure code scanning using GitHub Actions.

Thefirst stepwhen you receive a secret scanning alert is torevoke the secretif it is still valid. This ensures the secret can no longer be used maliciously. Only after revoking it should you proceed to remove it from the code history and apply other mitigation steps.

Simply deleting the secret from the code doesnotremove the risk if it hasn’t been revoked — especially since it may already be exposed in commit history.