About privately reporting a security vulnerability
Security researchers often feel responsible for alerting users to a vulnerability that could be exploited. If there are no clear instructions about contacting maintainers of the repository containing the vulnerability, security researchers may have no other choice but to post about the vulnerability on social media, send direct messages to the maintainer, or even create public issues. This situation can potentially lead to a public disclosure of the vulnerability details.
Private vulnerability reporting makes it easy for security researchers to report vulnerabilities directly to you using a simple form.
When a security researcher reports a vulnerability privately, you are notified and can choose to either accept it, ask more questions, or reject it. If you accept the report, you're ready to collaborate on a fix for the vulnerability in private with the security researcher.
For organization owners and security managers, the benefits of using private vulnerability reporting are:
- Less risk of being contacted publicly, or via undesired means.
- Receive reports in the same platform you resolve them in for simplicity
- The security researcher creates or at least initiates the advisory report on the behalf of maintainers.
- Maintainers receive reports in the same platform as the one used to discuss and resolve the advisories.
- Vulnerability less likely to be in the public eye.
- The opportunity to discuss vulnerability details privately with security researchers and collaborate on the patch.
The instructions below refer to enablement at organization level. For information about enabling the feature for a repository, see Configuring private vulnerability reporting for a repository.
When a new vulnerability is privately reported on a repository where private vulnerability reporting is enabled, GitHub notifies repository maintainers and security managers if:
- They're watching the repository for all activity.
- They have notifications enabled for the repository.
For more information about configuring notification preferences, see Configuring private vulnerability reporting for a repository.
Enabling or disabling private vulnerability reporting for public repositories added to the organization
You can enable or disable private vulnerability reporting for new public repositories added to the organization using the GitHub-recommended security configuration, or you can create a custom security configuration. For more information, see Applying the GitHub-recommended security configuration in your organization and Creating a custom security configuration.
What having private vulnerability reporting enabled for a repository looks like for a security researcher
When private vulnerability reporting is enabled for a repository, security researchers will see a new button in the Advisories page of the repository. The security researcher can click this button to privately report a security vulnerability to the repository maintainer.
Security researchers can also use the REST API to privately report security vulnerabilities. For more information, see Privately report a security vulnerability.