Developer Briefing — GitHub enables secret scanning push protection for public repos
GitHub announced on 21 February 2023 that secret scanning push protection is available for all public repositories, blocking commits containing tokens before they land in git history and expanding exposure prevention beyond private orgs.
On 21 February 2023 GitHub extended secret scanning push protection to every public repository, scanning commits in real time and rejecting pushes that contain credentials matched against partner token patterns. The capability had previously been limited to GitHub Advanced Security customers; the expansion brings pre-receive blocking to millions of open-source projects.
Engineering teams should enable push protection and review any blocked commits to remediate exposed tokens before retrying. Security leaders can combine the feature with branch protection and Dependabot alerts to reduce credential leakage risk and strengthen software supply-chain hygiene.
- GitHub changelog details the 21 February 2023 rollout and how push protection prevents token exposure.
- GitHub documentation explains developer workflows for handling blocked pushes, revoking secrets, and applying bypass approvals when necessary.
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