Dependabot quickstart guide

About Dependabot

This quickstart guide walks you through setting up and enabling Dependabot, viewing Dependabot alerts, and updating your repository to use a secure version of the dependency.

Dependabot se compose de trois fonctionnalités différentes qui vous aident à gérer vos dépendances :

• Dependabot alerts : Vous informe des vulnérabilités dans les dépendances que vous utilisez dans votre référentiel.
• Dependabot security updates : Lancer automatiquement des demandes de mise à jour des dépendances que vous utilisez et qui présentent des vulnérabilités de sécurité connues.
• Dependabot version updates : Lancer automatiquement des demandes de tirage pour maintenir vos dépendances à jour.

Prerequisites

For the purpose of this guide, we're going to use a demo repository to illustrate how Dependabot finds vulnerabilities in dependencies, where you can see Dependabot alerts on GitHub, and how you can explore, fix, or dismiss these alerts.

You need to start by forking the demo repository.

1. Navigate to https://github.com/dependabot/demo.
2. At the top of the page, on the right, click Fork.
3. Select an owner (you can select your GitHub personal account) and type a repository name. For more information about forking repositories, see Dupliquer un référentiel.
4. Click Create fork.

Enabling Dependabot for your repository

You need to follow the steps below on the repository you forked in Prerequisites.

1. Sur GitHub, accédez à la page principale du référentiel.

2. Sous le nom de votre référentiel, cliquez sur Paramètres. Si vous ne voyez pas l’onglet « Paramètres », sélectionnez le menu déroulant , puis cliquez sur Paramètres.

   

3. Dans la section « Sécurité » de la barre latérale, cliquez sur Advanced Security.

4. Under "Dependabot", click Enable for Dependabot alerts, Dependabot security updates, and Dependabot version updates.

5. If you clicked Enable for Dependabot version updates, you can edit the default dependabot.yml configuration file that GitHub creates for you in the /.github directory of your repository. To enable Dependabot version updates for your repository, you typically configure this file to suit your needs by editing the default file, and committing your changes. You can refer to the snippet provided in Configuring Dependabot version updates for an example.

For more information about configuring each of these Dependabot features, see Configuring Dependabot alerts, Configuring Dependabot security updates, and Configuring Dependabot version updates.

Viewing Dependabot alerts for your repository

If Dependabot alerts are enabled for a repository, you can view Dependabot alerts on the Security and quality tab for the repository. You can use the forked repository that you enabled Dependabot alerts on in the previous section.

1. Sur GitHub, accédez à la page principale du référentiel.

2. Sous le nom du référentiel, cliquez sur l’onglet Security and quality . Si vous ne voyez pas l’onglet « Security and quality », sélectionnez le menu déroulant, puis cliquez sur Security and quality.

3. Dans la section « Résultats » de la barre latérale, sélectionnez le Dependabot menu déroulant, puis cliquez sur Vulnérabilités.

4. Review the open alerts on the Dependabot alerts page. By default, the page displays the Open tab, listing the open alerts. (You'll be able to view any closed alerts by clicking Closed.)

   

   You can filter Dependabot alerts in the list, using a variety of filters or labels. For more information, see Viewing and updating Dependabot alerts. You can also use Règles de triage automatique de Dependabot to filter out false positive alerts or alerts you're not interested in. For more information, see Dependabot auto-triage rules.

5. Click the "Command Injection in lodash" alert on the javascript/package-lock.json file. The details page for the alert will show the following information (note that some information may not apply to all alerts):

   • Whether Dependabot created a pull request that will fix the vulnerability. You can review the suggested security update by clicking Review security update.
   • Package involved
   • Affected versions
   • Patched version
   • Brief description of the vulnerability
   

6. Optionally, you can also explore the information on the right-side of the page. Some of the information shown in the screenshot may not apply to every alert.

   • Severity
   • CVSS metrics: We use CVSS levels to assign severity levels. For more information, see GitHub Advisory database.
   • Tags
   • Weaknesses: List of CWEs related to the vulnerability, if applicable
   • CVE ID: Unique CVE identifier for the vulnerability, if applicable
   • GHSA ID: Unique identifier of the corresponding advisory on the GitHub Advisory Database. For more information, see GitHub Advisory database.
   • Option to navigate to the advisory on the GitHub Advisory Database
   • Option to see all of your repositories that are affected by this vulnerability
   • Option to suggest improvements for this advisory on the GitHub Advisory Database
   

For more information about viewing, prioritizing, and sorting Dependabot alerts, see Viewing and updating Dependabot alerts.

Fixing or dismissing a Dependabot alert

You can fix or dismiss Dependabot alerts on GitHub. Let's continue to use the forked repository as an example, and the "Command Injection in lodash" alert described in the previous section.

1. Navigate to the Dependabot tab for the repository. For more information, see the Viewing Dependabot alerts for your repository section above.
2. Click an alert.
3. Click the "Command Injection in lodash" alert on the javascript/package-lock.json file.
4. Review the alert. You can:

   • Review the suggested security update by clicking Review security update. This will open the pull request generated by Dependabot with the security fix.

     
     • On the pull request description, you can click Commits to explore the commits included in the pull request.
     • You can also click Dependabot commands and options to learn about the commands that you can use to interact with the pull request.
     • When you're ready to update your dependency and resolve the vulnerability, merge the pull request.

   • If you decide that you want to dismiss the alert

     • Go back to the alert details page.

     • On the top-right corner, click Dismiss alert.

       

     • Select a reason for dismissing the alert.

     • Optionally, add a dismissal comment. The dismissal comment will be added to the alert timeline and can be used as justification during auditing and reporting.

     • Click Dismiss alert. The alert won't appear anymore in the Open tab of the alert list, and you are able to view it in the Closed tab.

For more information about reviewing and updating Dependabot alerts, see Viewing and updating Dependabot alerts.

Troubleshooting

You may need to do some troubleshooting if:

• Dependabot is blocked from creating a pull request to fix an alert, or
• The information reported by Dependabot is not what you expect.

For more information, see Erreurs de Dependabot and Vulnerable dependency detection, respectively.

Next steps

For more information about configuring Dependabot updates, see Configuring Dependabot security updates and Configuring Dependabot version updates.

For more information about configuring Dependabot for an organization, see Configuring Dependabot alerts.

For more information about viewing pull requests opened by Dependabot, see Managing pull requests for dependency updates.

For more information about the security advisories that contribute to Dependabot alerts, see Browsing security advisories in the GitHub Advisory Database.

For more information about configuring notifications about Dependabot alerts, see Configuring notifications for Dependabot alerts.