How to audit pull requests for security vulnerabilities

Auditing pull requests (PRs) for security vulnerabilities is an important practice to maintain the integrity and safety of your codebase. By systematically reviewing PRs, you can detect and address potential security issues before they are merged into your main branch. This guide outlines effective strategies and tools to enhance your pull request security audits.

Setting up GitHub's security features

GitHub offers built-in tools to help identify vulnerabilities in your repositories:

1. Enable dependency graph and dependabot alerts: Navigate to your repository's settings, under the "Security and analysis" section, and ensure both the Dependency Graph and Dependabot alerts are enabled. This setup allows GitHub to notify you of known vulnerabilities in your project's dependencies.

2. Configure Dependabot security updates: By activating Dependabot security updates, GitHub can automatically generate PRs to update vulnerable dependencies, streamlining the process of keeping your project secure.

Automating vulnerability scans with GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a robust automation tool that enables you to integrate security vulnerability scans directly into your development workflow, ensuring that potential issues are identified and addressed promptly. To automate security checks on your code:

1. Set up a GitHub Action for security scanning: Create a workflow that runs security scans on your codebase during PRs or pushes. For example, you can use tools like safety for Python projects to check for known vulnerabilities:

   Terminal

   name: Vulnerability Scan
   on: [push, pull_request]
   jobs:
     security:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - uses: actions/checkout@v2
         - name: Set up Python
           uses: actions/setup-python@v2
         - name: Install dependencies
           run: pip install safety
         - name: Scan for vulnerabilities
           run: safety check
   
   

   This workflow ensures that each PR is automatically scanned for vulnerabilities, providing immediate feedback to developers.

Leveraging Diamond for enhanced security reviews

Diamond is Graphite's AI-powered code review tool that integrates with your GitHub repository to provide immediate, actionable feedback on each pull request. It automatically detects potential issues, including logical errors and potential security vulnerabilities, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of your code reviews.

Key features of Diamond

• Automated detection: Identifies various potential problems, including security flaws, performance issues, and documentation inconsistencies, allowing teams to focus on development rather than manual code checks.

• Seamless integration: Integrates effortlessly with your repository, providing valuable, context-aware suggestions without the clutter often found in other AI solutions.

• Customizable review criteria: Allows users to tailor review criteria by uploading preferred style guides and filtering out irrelevant comments, ensuring a streamlined and effective review process.

By incorporating Diamond into your workflow, you can proactively identify and address security vulnerabilities in your PRs before they reach human reviewers, thereby improving code quality and accelerating development timelines.

Best Practices for manual security code reviews

While automated tools are invaluable, manual reviews remain essential:

1. Establish clear guidelines: Define coding standards and security practices for your team to ensure consistency across reviews.

2. Use code review checklists: Develop checklists that include common security pitfalls and ensure they are part of the review process.

3. Involve multiple reviewers: Engage multiple team members in the review process to benefit from diverse perspectives and expertise.

4. Document review comments: Maintain records of review comments and resolutions to track decisions and facilitate knowledge sharing.

Conclusion

Auditing pull requests for security vulnerabilities is a multifaceted process that combines automated tools and manual reviews. By leveraging GitHub's security features and integrating tools like Graphite's Diamond, you can enhance your code review process, proactively identify potential issues, and maintain a secure codebase.