[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

[learn-build-service-prod]

PoliCheck Scan Report

The following report lists PoliCheck issues in PR files. Before you merge the PR, you must fix all severity-1 and severity-2 issues. The AI Review Details column lists suggestions for either removing or replacing the terms. If you find a false positive result, mention it in a PR comment and include this text: #policheck-false-positive. This feedback helps reduce false positives in future scans.

✅ No issues found

More information about PoliCheck

Information: PoliCheck | Severity Guidance | Term
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[learn-build-service-prod]

Learn Build status updates of commit 3ba38f6:

✅ Validation status: passed

File	Status	Preview URL	Details
.github/dependabot.yml	✅Succeeded
.github/workflows/expectations.yml	✅Succeeded
.github/workflows/quality.issue.yml	✅Succeeded
.github/workflows/quality.pr.yml	✅Succeeded
.github/workflows/stale-content.yml	✅Succeeded

For more details, please refer to the build report.

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

Two workflows still reference a remote action via the mutable @main ref, which conflicts with the stated action-pinning hardening objective and leaves a supply-chain risk unaddressed.

Once you've addressed the issues Copilot identified, you can request another Copilot review.

Pull request overview

This PR hardens the repository’s CI/CD configuration by pinning third-party GitHub Actions to full-length commit SHAs for supply-chain safety and reproducibility, and adds Dependabot configuration for GitHub Actions updates with a 7-day cooldown.

Changes:

• Pinned multiple third-party GitHub Actions in workflows from mutable tags (e.g., @v3, @v2, @v1) to full-length commit SHAs with version comments.
• Added .github/dependabot.yml to manage GitHub Actions updates weekly, grouping them and applying a 7-day cooldown window.

File summaries

File	Description
.github/workflows/stale-content.yml	Pins actions/checkout to a commit SHA (but still references another action via @main).
.github/workflows/quality.pr.yml	Pins actions-ecosystem/action-add-labels to a commit SHA.
.github/workflows/quality.issue.yml	Pins multiple actions-ecosystem/* actions to commit SHAs.
.github/workflows/expectations.yml	Pins actions/checkout to a commit SHA (but still references another action via @main).
.github/dependabot.yml	Adds Dependabot configuration for GitHub Actions with grouping, weekly schedule, and 7-day cooldown.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 5/5 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Lite

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