Dependabot quickstart guide

About Dependabot

This quickstart guide walks you through setting up and enabling Dependabot, viewing Dependabot alerts, and updating your repository to use a secure version of the dependency.

Dependabot consta de tres características diferentes que te ayudan a administrar las dependencias:

• Dependabot alerts: te informa sobre las vulnerabilidades de las dependencias que usas en el repositorio.
• Dependabot security updates: genera solicitudes de cambios de forma automática para actualizar las dependencias que usas y que tienen vulnerabilidades de seguridad conocidas.
• Dependabot version updates: genera solicitudes de cambios de forma automática para mantener actualizadas tus dependencias.

Prerequisites

Before you can use the Dependabot alerts feature in GitHub, you must ensure that your enterprise administrator enables Dependabot for the instance. For more information, see Habilitación de Dependabot para la empresa.

For the purpose of this guide, we're going to use a demo repository to illustrate how Dependabot finds vulnerabilities in dependencies, where you can see Dependabot alerts on GitHub, and how you can explore, fix, or dismiss these alerts.

You need to start by forking the demo repository.

1. Navigate to https://github.com/dependabot/demo.
2. At the top of the page, on the right, click Fork.
3. Select an owner (you can select your GitHub personal account) and type a repository name. For more information about forking repositories, see Bifurcar un repositorio.
4. Click Create fork.

Enabling Dependabot for your repository

You need to follow the steps below on the repository you forked in Prerequisites.

1. En GitHub, navegue hasta la página principal del repositorio.

2. Debajo del nombre del repositorio, haz clic en Settings. Si no puedes ver la pestaña "Configuración", selecciona el menú desplegable y, a continuación, haz clic en Configuración.

   

3. En la sección "Security" de la barra lateral, haz clic en Code security and analysis.

4. Under "Dependabot", click Enable for Dependabot alerts, Dependabot security updates, and Dependabot version updates.

5. If you clicked Enable for Dependabot version updates, you can edit the default dependabot.yml configuration file that GitHub creates for you in the /.github directory of your repository. To enable Dependabot version updates for your repository, you typically configure this file to suit your needs by editing the default file, and committing your changes. You can refer to the snippet provided in Configuración de las actualizaciones de versiones de Dependabot for an example.

For more information about configuring each of these Dependabot features, see Configuración de alertas de Dependabot, Configuración de actualizaciones de seguridad de Dependabot, and Configuración de las actualizaciones de versiones de Dependabot.

Viewing Dependabot alerts for your repository

If Dependabot alerts are enabled for a repository, you can view Dependabot alerts on the "Security" tab for the repository. You can use the forked repository that you enabled Dependabot alerts on in the previous section.

1. En GitHub, navegue hasta la página principal del repositorio.

2. Debajo del nombre del repositorio, haz clic en Security. Si no puedes ver la pestaña "Security", selecciona el menú desplegable y, después, haz clic en Security.

   

3. En la barra lateral "Alertas de vulnerabilidad" de la Información general sobre seguridad, haga clic en Dependabot . Si falta esta opción, significa que no tiene acceso a las alertas de seguridad y se le debe proporcionar. Para más información, consulta Administración de la configuración de seguridad y análisis para el repositorio.

   

4. Review the open alerts on the Dependabot alerts page. By default, the page displays the Open tab, listing the open alerts. (You'll be able to view any closed alerts by clicking Closed.)

   

   You can filter Dependabot alerts in the list, using a variety of filters or labels. For more information, see Visualización y actualización de alertas de Dependabot. You can also use Evaluación de prioridades automática de Dependabot to filter out false positive alerts or alerts you're not interested in. For more information, see Acerca de Evaluación de prioridades automática de Dependabot.

5. Click the "Command Injection in lodash" alert on the javascript/package-lock.json file. The details page for the alert will show the following information (note that some information may not apply to all alerts):

   • Whether Dependabot created a pull request that will fix the vulnerability. You can review the suggested security update by clicking Review security update.
   • Package involved
   • Affected versions
   • Patched version
   • Brief description of the vulnerability
   

6. Optionally, you can also explore the information on the right-side of the page. Some of the information shown in the screenshot may not apply to every alert.

   • Severity
   • CVSS metrics: We use CVSS levels to assign severity levels. For more information, see Acerca de GitHub Advisory Database.
   • Tags
   • Weaknesses: List of CWEs related to the vulnerability, if applicable
   • CVE ID: Unique CVE identifier for the vulnerability, if applicable
   • GHSA ID: Unique identifier of the corresponding advisory on the GitHub Advisory Database. For more information, see Acerca de GitHub Advisory Database.
   • Option to navigate to the advisory on the GitHub Advisory Database
   • Option to see all of your repositories that are affected by this vulnerability
   • Option to suggest improvements for this advisory on the GitHub Advisory Database
   

For more information about viewing, prioritizing, and sorting Dependabot alerts, see Visualización y actualización de alertas de Dependabot.

Fixing or dismissing a Dependabot alert

You can fix or dismiss Dependabot alerts on GitHub. Let's continue to use the forked repository as an example, and the "Command Injection in lodash" alert described in the previous section.

1. Navigate to the Dependabot alerts tab for the repository. For more information, see the Viewing Dependabot alerts for your repository section above.
2. Click an alert.
3. Click the "Command Injection in lodash" alert on the javascript/package-lock.json file.
4. Review the alert. You can:

   • Review the suggested security update by clicking Review security update. This will open the pull request generated by Dependabot with the security fix.

     
     • On the pull request description, you can click Commits to explore the commits included in the pull request.
     • You can also click Dependabot commands and options to learn about the commands that you can use to interact with the pull request.
     • When you're ready to update your dependency and resolve the vulnerability, merge the pull request.

   • If you decide that you want to dismiss the alert

     • Go back to the alert details page.

     • On the top-right corner, click Dismiss alert.

       

     • Select a reason for dismissing the alert.

     • Optionally, add a dismissal comment. The dismissal comment will be added to the alert timeline and can be used as justification during auditing and reporting.

     • Click Dismiss alert. The alert won't appear anymore in the Open tab of the alert list, and you are able to view it in the Closed tab.

For more information about reviewing and updating Dependabot alerts, see Visualización y actualización de alertas de Dependabot.

Troubleshooting

You may need to do some troubleshooting if:

• Dependabot is blocked from creating a pull request to fix an alert, or
• The information reported by Dependabot is not what you expect.

For more information, see Solucionar problemas de los errores del Dependabot and Solucionar problemas en la detección de dependencias vulnerables, respectively.

Next steps

For more information about configuring Dependabot updates, see Configuración de actualizaciones de seguridad de Dependabot and Configuración de las actualizaciones de versiones de Dependabot.

For more information about configuring Dependabot for an organization, see Configuración de alertas de Dependabot.

For more information about viewing pull requests opened by Dependabot, see Administrar las solicitudes de extracción para las actualizaciones de dependencia.

For more information about the security advisories that contribute to Dependabot alerts, see Exploración de los avisos de seguridad en GitHub Advisory Database.

For more information about configuring notifications about Dependabot alerts, see Configuración de notificaciones para alertas de Dependabot.