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Finding vulnerable dependencies

Security vulnerabilities can cause a range of problems for your project or the people who use it. A vulnerability could affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a project. Sometimes vulnerabilities aren't in the code you write, but in the code your project depends on. Staying up-to-date with the most recent versions is the best line of defense, but has the potential to cause integration issues, so GitHub alerts you of the safest next-version of a dependency.

This repository has some existing dependencies which will need updating to stay secure.

GitHub's security alerts for vulnerable dependencies

You may notice some alerts from GitHub about this repository. You may get an email, or see a yellow bar warning you about the package.json file.

GitHub tracks vulnerabilities for a number of supported languages and their associated package ecosystems, including RubyGems, NPM, Python PIP, Maven, and .NET.

GitHub receives a notification of a newly-announced vulnerability. Next, we check for repositories that use the affected version of that dependency. We send security alerts to a set of people within those affected repositories. The owners are contacted by default and it's possible to configure specific teams or individuals to get these important notifications.

GitHub never publicly discloses identified vulnerabilities for any repository.

Step 2: Find this repository's vulnerable dependencies

Use Dependabot alerts to identify a vulnerable NPM dependency.

⌨️ Activity: Identify the suggested version update

1. Click the Security tab in your repository.
2. On the left hand navigation bar, click Dependabot alerts.
3. Follow the instructions to enable Dependabot alerts, if they're not already enabled.
4. Click on the debug alert.
5. Take note of the suggested version.
6. Comment in this issue with the suggested update version.

GitHub Enterprise Server only: This is all possible on GitHub Enterprise through GitHub Connect. It may take up to an hour to refresh the alerts and make them visible. After waiting a reasonable amount of time, if you are still not seeing the yellow bar in the Dependency Graph, you may want to contact your administrator. In the mean time, to move along with the course, we'll give you a hint - the recommended upgraded version is 2.6.9.

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Automated dependency updates with Dependabot

Manually going through your dependencies for alerts and outdated versions is tedious work. Let's automate this process!

Meet Dependabot

Dependabot alerts you and creates pull requests to keep your dependencies secure and up-to-date!

How does Dependabot work?

Dependabot is the actor for GitHub's automated security updates.

1. GitHub uses the dependency graph and security alerts to scan your repository and notify you of potential dependency updates
2. If any dependencies are out-of-date, Dependabot opens a pull request to update each one
3. If tests pass, and the updated version looks good, you simply merge the pull request

Configuring Dependabot security updates

You can enable automated security updates for any repository that uses security alerts and the dependency graph. You can disable automated security updates for an individual repository or for all repositories owned by your user account or organization. GitHub will automatically enable automated security updates in every repository that uses security alerts and the dependency graph.

Here, we have a security alert on the debug dependency. Clicking on debug will show you the pull request created by Dependabot to update the dependency. We just updated to 2.6.9 but Dependabot noticed we are still outdated.

If you navigate to your closed pull requests, you'll notice Dependabot has done its job and is trying to bump, or update, the version of debug.

Close this issue when done

I'll respond below when you close the issue.

🎉 Welcome to security strategy essentials!

In this course, you'll learn how to build and host a secure repository in GitHub. A secure repository is important for many reasons, including:

• Prevents exposing sensitive data
• Enforces secure development best practices
• Guards against unintended access rights and permissions

In this course you will learn how to:

• Opt-in to security alerts for private repositories
  • Note: Vulnerability monitoring and security alerts are enabled by default for public repositories that are not forks.
• Fix vulnerable dependencies when notified by a security alert
• Automate security fixes with Dependabot
• Follow security best practices to protect sensitive data by using a .gitignore file
• Remove sensitive data and files committed to a repository

New to GitHub?

For this course, you'll need to be comfortable with the GitHub Flow. If you need a refresher on the GitHub flow, check out the the Introduction to GitHub course.

Step 1: Your project on GitHub Pages

This project is centered around a memory game that will be deployed with GitHub Pages.

⌨️ Activity: Enable GitHub Pages

1. Click the Settings tab in your repository.
2. Scroll down to GitHub Pages and set your default branch as the source, usually main.

Turning on GitHub Pages creates a deployment of your repository. I may take up to a minute to respond as I await the deployment.

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Sometimes I respond too fast for the page to update! If you perform an expected action and don't see a response from me, wait a few seconds. Then refresh the page for your next steps.