Browsing security vulnerabilities in the GitHub Advisory Database

About security vulnerabilities

A vulnerability is a problem in a project's code that could be exploited to damage the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the project or other projects that use its code. Vulnerabilities vary in type, severity, and method of attack.

GitHub will send you Dependabot alerts if we detect that any of the vulnerabilities from the GitHub Advisory Database affect the packages that your repository depends on. For more information, see "About alerts for vulnerable dependencies."

About the GitHub Advisory Database

The GitHub Advisory Database contains a curated list of security vulnerabilities that have been mapped to packages tracked by the GitHub dependency graph. We add vulnerabilities to the GitHub Advisory Database from the following sources:

• The National Vulnerability Database
• A combination of machine learning and human review to detect vulnerabilities in public commits on GitHub
• Security advisories reported on GitHub
• The npm Security advisories database

Each security advisory contains information about the vulnerability, including the description, severity, affected package, package ecosystem, affected versions and patched versions, impact, and optional information such as references, workarounds, and credits. In addition, advisories from the National Vulnerability Database list contain a link to the CVE record, where you can read more details about the vulnerability, its CVSS scores, and its qualitative severity level. For more information, see the "National Vulnerability Database" from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The severity level is one of four possible levels defined in the "Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), Section 5."

• Low
• Medium/Moderate
• High
• Critical

The GitHub Advisory Database uses the CVSS levels described above. If GitHub obtains a CVE, the GitHub Advisory Database uses CVSS version 3.1. If the CVE is imported, the GitHub Advisory Database supports both CVSS versions 3.0 and 3.1.

You can also join GitHub Security Lab to browse security-related topics and contribute to security tools and projects.

Accessing an advisory in the GitHub Advisory Database

1. Navigate to https://github.com/advisories.
2. Optionally, to filter the list, use any of the drop-down menus.
3. Click on any advisory to view details.

Searching the GitHub Advisory Database

You can search the database, and use qualifiers to narrow your search. For example, you can search for advisories created on a certain date, in a specific ecosystem, or in a particular library.

Date formatting must follow the ISO8601 standard, which is YYYY-MM-DD (year-month-day). You can also add optional time information THH:MM:SS+00:00 after the date, to search by the hour, minute, and second. That's T, followed by HH:MM:SS (hour-minutes-seconds), and a UTC offset (+00:00).

When you search for a date, you can use greater than, less than, and range qualifiers to further filter results. For more information, see "Understanding the search syntax."

Qualifier	Example
GHSA-ID	GHSA-49wp-qq6x-g2rf will show the advisory with this GitHub Advisory Database ID.
CVE-ID	CVE-2020-28482 will show the advisory with this CVE ID number.
ecosystem:ECOSYSTEM	ecosystem:npm will show only advisories affecting NPM packages.
severity:LEVEL	severity:high will show only advisories with a high severity level.
affects:LIBRARY	affects:lodash will show only advisories affecting the lodash library.
cwe:ID	cwe:352 will show only advisories with this CWE number.
credit:USERNAME	credit:octocat will show only advisories credited to the "octocat" user account.
sort:created-asc	sort:created-asc will sort by the oldest advisories first.
sort:created-desc	sort:created-desc will sort by the newest advisories first.
sort:updated-asc	sort:updated-asc will sort by the least recently updated first.
sort:updated-desc	sort:updated-desc will sort by the most recently updated first.
is:withdrawn	is:withdrawn will show only advisories that have been withdrawn.
created:YYYY-MM-DD	created:2021-01-13 will show only advisories created on this date.
updated:YYYY-MM-DD	updated:2021-01-13 will show only advisories updated on this date.

Viewing your vulnerable repositories

For any vulnerability in the GitHub Advisory Database, you can see which of your repositories have a Dependabot alert for that vulnerability. To see a vulnerable repository, you must have access to Dependabot alerts for that repository. For more information, see "About alerts for vulnerable dependencies."

1. Navigate to https://github.com/advisories.
2. Click an advisory.
3. At the top of the advisory page, click Dependabot alerts.
4. Optionally, to filter the list, use the search bar or the drop-down menus. The "Organization" drop-down menu allows you to filter the Dependabot alerts per owner (organization or user).
5. For more details about the vulnerability, and for advice on how to fix the vulnerable repository, click the repository name.

Further reading

• MITRE's definition of "vulnerability"