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]

Pull request overview

This PR hardens the repository’s CI/CD by pinning GitHub Actions to full commit SHAs (to reduce tag-retargeting/supply-chain risk) and adds a Dependabot cooldown for GitHub Actions updates.

Changes:

• Replaced tag-based uses: owner/action@v* references in multiple workflows with full-length commit SHAs plus version comments.
• Added a 7-day Dependabot cooldown for the github-actions ecosystem.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 21 out of 21 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
.github/workflows/typos.yaml	Pins actions/checkout, jitterbit/get-changed-files, and crate-ci/typos to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-unit-tests.yml	Pins actions/checkout, astral-sh/setup-uv, and pmeier/pytest-results-action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-test-coverage.yml	Pins actions/checkout, astral-sh/setup-uv, and actions/upload-artifact to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-test-coverage-report.yml	Pins actions/checkout, actions/download-artifact, and MishaKav/pytest-coverage-comment to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-manual-release.yml	Pins azure/login and azure/cli to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-lint.yml	Pins actions/checkout, astral-sh/setup-uv, and pre-commit/action to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-integration-tests.yml	Pins multiple third-party actions (checkout, paths-filter, auth/setup-gcloud, AWS creds, github-script, Teams notify) to SHAs.
.github/workflows/python-build.yml	Pins actions/checkout, astral-sh/setup-uv, softprops/action-gh-release, azure/login, and azure/cli to SHAs.
.github/workflows/merge-gatekeeper.yml	Pins upsidr/merge-gatekeeper to a SHA (with version comment).
.github/workflows/markdown-link-check.yml	Pins actions/checkout and umbrelladocs/action-linkspector to SHAs.
.github/workflows/label-title-prefix.yml	Pins actions/github-script to a SHA.
.github/workflows/label-pr.yml	Pins actions/labeler to a SHA.
.github/workflows/label-issues.yml	Pins actions/github-script to a SHA.
.github/workflows/dotnet-integration-tests.yml	Pins actions/checkout, actions/setup-dotnet, and actions/upload-artifact to SHAs.
.github/workflows/dotnet-format.yml	Pins actions/checkout and jitterbit/get-changed-files to SHAs.
.github/workflows/dotnet-ci.yml	Pins actions/checkout, actions/setup-dotnet, actions/cache, and actions/upload-artifact to SHAs.
.github/workflows/dotnet-build-and-test.yml	Pins checkout/paths-filter/setup-dotnet/azure-login/report generator/upload-artifact/github-script steps to SHAs.
.github/workflows/devflow-pr-review.yml	Pins actions/checkout, actions/setup-python, and astral-sh/setup-uv to SHAs.
.github/workflows/codeql-analysis.yml	Pins actions/checkout and github/codeql-action/* steps to SHAs.
.github/workflows/close-inactive-issues.yml	Pins actions/stale to a SHA.
.github/dependabot.yml	Adds a 7-day cooldown for github-actions updates.

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