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]

🟢 Approval recommended

The changes are straightforward, consistent, and limited to security-focused pinning plus a new Dependabot configuration without altering workflow logic.

Pull request overview

This PR hardens the repository’s CI and maintenance automation by pinning GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs (reducing the risk of tag-retargeting supply-chain attacks) and adding a Dependabot configuration to manage GitHub Actions updates with a 7-day cooldown.

Changes:

• Pinned actions/checkout, actions/setup-dotnet, and other third-party actions to full commit SHAs across existing workflows.
• Pinned actions/stale and actions/upload-artifact to full commit SHAs in maintenance/CI workflows.
• Added .github/dependabot.yml to enable github-actions updates with a weekly schedule and a 7-day cooldown.

File summaries

File	Description
.github/workflows/vim-test.yml	Pins workflow actions to full commit SHAs for reproducible Vim-based CI runs.
.github/workflows/emacs-test.yml	Pins workflow actions to full commit SHAs for reproducible Emacs-based CI runs.
.github/workflows/close-stale-issues.yml	Pins actions/stale to a full commit SHA to harden issue housekeeping automation.
.github/workflows/ci-test.yml	Pins key CI actions (checkout/setup-dotnet/upload-artifact) to full commit SHAs for hardened builds/tests.
.github/dependabot.yml	Adds Dependabot config for GitHub Actions with a weekly schedule and 7-day cooldown.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 5/5 changed files
• Comments generated: 0
• Review effort level: Lite

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