Pin GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs

[Dan Fiedler (danfiedler-msft)]

Summary

This PR pins GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs for improved security and reproducibility and adds a 7 day cooldown to Dependabot configuration for GitHub Actions. This work is described in more detail at https://aka.ms/action-pinning.

Why?

Pinning actions to commit SHAs prevents supply-chain attacks where a tag could be moved to point to malicious code. This is a recommended security best practice per the GitHub Actions security hardening guide.

This change mitigates the risk of tag retargeting to malicious code as seen in incidents like the tj-actions/changed-files action compromise or codfish/semantic-release-action compromise and improves the integrity and reproducibility of the CI/CD pipeline.

What changed?

Action pinning: Third-party action references in .github/workflows/ that used mutable tag-based references (e.g., actions/checkout@v4) have been updated to full-length commit SHAs with a version comment (e.g., actions/checkout@<sha> # v4) using the pinact tool. References that were already pinned to a SHA, or that used immutable release tags, were left unchanged.

Dependabot configuration: .github/dependabot.yml has been updated to ensure a github-actions package-ecosystem section is present with a cooldown configuration (default-days: 7). If the file did not exist, it was created. If a github-actions section already existed, only the cooldown block was added or its default-days value was increased to 7 if it was lower. The 7-day cooldown provides a window for the community to detect and report compromised releases before they are automatically proposed as updates, reducing exposure to supply-chain attacks via newly published malicious versions.

Is this safe to merge?

Yes. The pinned SHAs correspond to the same commits that the existing tags pointed to. No behavioral changes in action execution are introduced. You can verify the pinned SHA value using the GitHub REST API (e.g., the commit hash for actions/checkout@v7 can be found in the sha property in the JSON response for GET https://api.github.com/repos/actions/checkout/commits/v7).

Additional Information

For more information, please see https://aka.ms/action-pinning

[github-actions]

Thank you for your contribution Dan Fiedler (@danfiedler-msft)! We will review the pull request and get back to you soon.

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Pins GitHub Actions to immutable SHAs and configures delayed Dependabot updates.

Changes:

• Pins workflow actions with version annotations.
• Adds a seven-day Dependabot cooldown.
• Updates generated workflow lock annotations.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 11 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
.github/workflows/verify-links.yml	Pins checkout.
.github/workflows/typespec-python-regenerate.yml	Annotates existing action pins.
.github/workflows/scheduled-event-processor.yml	Pins artifact upload.
.github/workflows/post-apiview.yml	Pins checkout.
.github/workflows/mgmt-sdk-pr-review.lock.yml	Adds setup-action version comments.
.github/workflows/event-processor.yml	Pins login and artifact upload.
.github/workflows/dependency-checker.yml	Pins checkout and Python setup.
.github/workflows/copilot-setup-steps.yml	Pins checkout and Python setup.
.github/workflows/azure-sdk-tools.yml	Pins actions across tool jobs.
.github/workflows/actionlint.yml	Pins checkout.
.github/dependabot.yml	Adds weekly grouped updates with cooldown.

Suppressed comments (5)

.github/workflows/mgmt-sdk-pr-review.lock.yml:396

• This is another direct edit to the generated lock file, so it will be removed by the next gh aw compile. Keep the generated output reproducible by reverting this already-SHA-pinned reference.

        uses: github/gh-aw-actions/setup@423b3dc04bbf1b1797194a4a75aa5cf5d0d4f5b3 # v0.87.1

.github/workflows/mgmt-sdk-pr-review.lock.yml:1021

• This direct change to the generated lock output is not durable and will be discarded on recompilation. Revert the version comment because the reference was already pinned to this SHA.

        uses: github/gh-aw-actions/setup@423b3dc04bbf1b1797194a4a75aa5cf5d0d4f5b3 # v0.87.1

.github/workflows/mgmt-sdk-pr-review.lock.yml:1274

• This direct change to the generated lock output is not durable and will be discarded on recompilation. Revert the version comment because the reference was already pinned to this SHA.

        uses: github/gh-aw-actions/setup@423b3dc04bbf1b1797194a4a75aa5cf5d0d4f5b3 # v0.87.1

.github/workflows/mgmt-sdk-pr-review.lock.yml:1543

• This direct change to the generated lock output is not durable and will be discarded on recompilation. Revert the version comment because the reference was already pinned to this SHA.

        uses: github/gh-aw-actions/setup@423b3dc04bbf1b1797194a4a75aa5cf5d0d4f5b3 # v0.87.1

.github/workflows/mgmt-sdk-pr-review.lock.yml:1612

• This direct change to the generated lock output is not durable and will be discarded on recompilation. Revert the version comment because the reference was already pinned to this SHA.

        uses: github/gh-aw-actions/setup@423b3dc04bbf1b1797194a4a75aa5cf5d0d4f5b3 # v0.87.1