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

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The workflow references are consistently pinned to full-length SHAs and the new Dependabot configuration is well-formed and aligns with the stated security goal without introducing behavioral changes.

Pull request overview

This PR hardens the repository’s CI/CD posture by replacing mutable GitHub Actions version tags with full-length commit SHAs (improving supply-chain security and reproducibility) and by introducing a Dependabot cooldown for GitHub Actions updates.

Changes:

• Pin third-party GitHub Actions in .github/workflows/* to full-length commit SHAs with version comments.
• Add .github/dependabot.yml configuring weekly GitHub Actions updates plus a 7-day cooldown window.
• Keep workflow behavior intact while improving determinism of action execution.

File summaries

File	Description
.github/workflows/vmware-release-main.yaml	Pins actions/checkout and peter-evans/create-pull-request to SHAs.
.github/workflows/update-sdk.yaml	Pins Docker setup and checkout actions to SHAs.
.github/workflows/update-portage-stable-packages-from-list.yaml	Pins multiple actions/checkout uses and PR creation action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/update-metadata-glsa.yaml	Pins checkout and PR creation action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/run-kola-tests.yaml	Pins Docker setup, checkout, artifact upload/download, and PR comment actions to SHAs.
.github/workflows/pr-comment-build-dispatcher.yaml	Pins PR comment action to a full SHA.
.github/workflows/mantle-releases-main.yml	Pins checkout and PR creation action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/kernel-release.yaml	Pins checkout and PR creation action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/firmware-release-main.yaml	Pins checkout and PR creation action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/ci.yaml	Pins Docker setup, checkout, and upload-artifact actions to SHAs.
.github/workflows/cacerts-release.yaml	Pins checkout and PR creation action to SHAs.
.github/dependabot.yml	Adds Dependabot config for GitHub Actions with weekly cadence and 7-day cooldown.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 12/12 changed files
• Comments generated: 0
• Review effort level: Lite

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