GH-500 Exam Dumps - Microsoft GitHub Administrator Questions and Answers

When dealing with a data flow issue in a code scanning alert, clicking on "Show paths" provides a detailed view of the data's journey through the code. This includes the source of the data, the path it takes, and where it ends up (the sink). This information is crucial for understanding how untrusted data might reach sensitive parts of your application and helps in identifying where to implement proper validation or sanitization.​

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

When setting up CodeQL analysis for compiled languages, there are two primary methods to build your code:​

GitHub Docs

Autobuild: CodeQL attempts to automatically build your codebase using the most likely build method. This is suitable for standard build processes.​

GitHub Docs

Custom Build Steps: For complex or non-standard build processes, you can implement custom build steps by specifying explicit build commands in your workflow. This provides greater control over the build process.​

GitHub Docs

The init action initializes the CodeQL analysis but does not build the code. The jobs.analyze.runs-on specifies the operating system for the runner but is not directly related to building the code. Uploading compiled binaries is not a method supported by CodeQL for analysis.​

The GitHub Code Scanning API includes endpoints that allow you to:

List alerts for a repository (filtered by branch, state, or tool) — useful for monitoring security over time.

Get a single alert by its ID to inspect its metadata, status, and locations in the code.

However, GitHub does not support modifying the severity of alerts via API — severity is defined by the scanning tool (e.g., CodeQL). Likewise, alerts cannot be deleted via the API; they are resolved by fixing the code or dismissing them manually.

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

This tells GitHub to ignore specified paths when 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.

If an alert is raised on a pull request dependency, best practice is to update the dependency to a secure version before merging the PR. This prevents the vulnerable version from entering the main codebase.

Merging or deploying the PR without fixing the issue exposes your production environment to known risks.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

To generate a dependency graph for a private repository, GitHub requires:​

Dependency graph enabled: The repository must have the dependency graph feature enabled. This can be configured at the organization level to apply to all new private repositories.​

Access to manifest and lock files: GitHub needs read-only access to the repository's dependency manifest and lock files (e.g., package.json, requirements.txt) to identify and map dependencies.​

A Dependabot alert is marked as resolved only after the related pull request is merged into the repository. This indicates that the vulnerable dependency has been officially replaced with a secure version in the active codebase.

Simply generating a PR or passing checks does not change the alert status; merging is the key step.

To ensure you're notified whenever a vulnerability is detected via Dependabot, you must enable alerts for Dependabot in your personal notification settings. This applies to both new and existing repositories. It ensures you get timely alerts about security vulnerabilities.

The dependency graph must be enabled for scanning, but does not send alerts itself.

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

The best proactive control is push protection. It scans for secrets during a git push and blocks the commit before it 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.