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.

By default,secret scanning is enabled automatically for all public repositories. For private or internal repositories, secret scanning must be enabled manually unless configured at the organization or enterprise level.

This default behavior helps protect open-source projects without requiring additional configuration.

Toexclude.txt and .md files from triggering workflows on pull requests to the main branch:

on: defines the event (e.g., pull_request)

pull_request: is the trigger

paths-ignore: is the key used to ignore file patterns

Example YAML:

yaml

CopyEdit

on:

pull_request:

branches:

- main

paths-ignore:

- '*.md'

- '*.txt'

Using paths: would include only specific files instead — not exclude. paths-ignore: is correct here.

When defining a custom pattern for secret scanning, two key fields are required:

Name of the pattern: A unique label to identify the pattern

Secret format: A regular expression that defines what the secret looks like (e.g., token format)

You can optionally specifyadditional match requirements(like required context keywords), but they’re not mandatory. Listing repositories is also not part of the required fields during pattern creation.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

A CodeQL database contains a representation of your codebase, including the build of the code and extracted data. This database is used to run CodeQL queries to analyze your code for potential vulnerabilities and errors.​

GitHub Docs

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.

TheSecurity tabin a GitHub repository provides a central location for viewing security-related information, especially when GitHub Advanced Security is enabled. The following can be accessed:

Number ofalertsrelated to:

Code scanning

Secret scanning

Dependency (Dependabot) alerts

Summary and visibility into open, closed, and dismissed security issues.

It doesnotshow 2FA options, access control settings, or configuration panels for GHAS itself. Those belong to account or organization-level settings.

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.

To exclude specific files or directories from being scanned by secret scanning in GitHub Actions, you can use thepaths-ignore:key within your YAML workflow file.

This tells GitHub toignore specified pathswhen scanning for secrets, which can be useful for excluding test data or non-sensitive mock content.

Other options listed are invalid:

branches-ignore: excludes branches, not files.

decrypt_secret.sh is not a YAML key.

secret scanning.yml is not a recognized filename for configuration.

All results from CodeQL analysis appear under therepository’s code scanning alertstab. This section is part of theSecuritytab and provides a list of all current, fixed, and dismissed alerts found by CodeQL.

A CodeQL database is used internally during scanning but does not display results. Query packs contain rules, not results. Security advisories are for published vulnerabilities, not per-repo findings.

In a repository'sSecuritytab, you can view:

Secret scanning alerts: Exposed credentials or tokens

Dependabot alerts: Vulnerable dependencies from the advisory database

Code scanning alerts: Vulnerabilities in code detected via static analysis (e.g., CodeQL)

Youwon’t seegeneral "security status alerts" (not a formal category) or permission-related alerts here.

When apublic repositorycontains credentials that match known secret formats, GitHub willautomatically notify the service providerthat issued the secret. This process is known as"secret scanning partner notification". The provider may then revoke the secret or contact the userdirectly.

GitHub doesnotpublicly display the alert and does not send internal repository notifications for public detections.

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.

The best way toprioritizesecret scanning alerts is tofilter by active secrets— these are secrets GitHub has confirmed are still valid and could be exploited. This allows security teams to focus on high-risk exposures that require immediate attention.

Sorting by time or filtering by custom patterns won’t help with risk prioritization directly.

When you identify that a code scanning alert is a false positive—such as when your code uses a custom sanitization method not recognized by the analysis—you should dismiss the alert with the reason "false positive." This action helps improve the accuracy of future analyses and maintains the relevance of your security alerts.​

As per GitHub's documentation:​

"If you dismiss a CodeQL alert as a false positive result, for example because the code uses a sanitization library that isn't supported, consider contributing to the CodeQL repository and improving the analysis."​

By dismissing the alert appropriately, you ensure that your codebase's security alerts remain actionable and relevant.

Dependabot alerts are generated as soon as GitHub detects a known vulnerability in one of your dependencies. GitHub does this by analyzing your repository’s dependency graph and matching it against vulnerabilities listed in the GitHub Advisory Database. Once a match is found, the system raises an alert automatically without waiting for a PR or manual action.

This allows organizations to proactively mitigate vulnerabilities as early as possible, based on real-time detection.

Whenmultiple instances of the same secret valueappear in a repository,only one alertis generated. Secret scanning works by identifying exposed credentials and token patterns, and it groups identical matches into asingle alertto reduce noise and avoid duplication.

This makes triaging easier and helps teams focus on remediating the actual exposed credential rather than reviewing multiple redundant alerts.

Youmust enable secret scanningbefore defining custom patterns. Secret scanning provides the foundational capability for detecting exposed credentials, and custom patterns build upon that by allowing organizations to specify their own regex-based patterns for secrets unique to their environment.

Without enabling secret scanning, GitHub will not process or apply custom patterns.

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.​