Checkout persists credentials in .git/config
Control:CTRL-307Checkout must not persist credentials
📋 What is this?
A workflow calls actions/checkout without persist-credentials: false, which leaves the GITHUB_TOKEN bound to .git/config for the rest of the job.
⚠️ Impact
On its own this is latent: the token is discarded when the job ends. It becomes a demonstrable leak when a later actions/upload-artifact step bundles .git into the artifact zip - that escalation is reported separately as ISSUE-310 (high). The other route, a persisted credential harvested by fork-controlled code, is covered by ISSUE-802 and ISSUE-804.
🔧 How to fix
Set persist-credentials: false on every actions/checkout step unless you have a specific reason to keep the credentials configured.
# .github/workflows/build.yml: ❌ Credentials remain in .git/configjobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 # persist-credentials defaults to true - run: ./build.sh - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4 with: path: . # bundles .git/config including credentials# .github/workflows/build.yml: ✅ persist-credentials: falsejobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@11bd71901bbe5b1630ceea73d27597364c9af683 # v4.2.2 with: persist-credentials: false - run: ./build.sh - uses: actions/upload-artifact@26f96dfa697d77e81fd5907df203aa23a56210a8 # v4.3.0 with: path: dist/ # narrow path, no .git💡 Tips
- If a subsequent step needs to push back to the repo, configure git credentials explicitly via
git remote set-url origin https://x-access-token:$GH_TOKEN@github.com/.... - Never upload the entire workspace as an artifact. Always narrow the path.
⚙️ Configure this control
With the CLI alone: set it in your configuration file. Every field and default is in the controls configuration reference, CTRL-307.