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@jrfnl jrfnl commented Sep 19, 2025

Users frequently over-scope their workflow and job permissions, or set broad workflow-level permissions without realizing that all jobs inherit those permissions.

Furthermore, users often don't realize that the default GITHUB_TOKEN permissions can be very broad, meaning that workflows that don't configure any permissions at all can still provide excessive credentials to their individual jobs.

Remediation
In general, permissions should be declared as minimally as possible, and as close to their usage site as possible.

In practice, this means that workflows should almost always set permissions: {} at the workflow level to disable all permissions by default, and then set specific job-level permissions as needed.

Refs:

> Users frequently over-scope their workflow and job permissions, or set broad workflow-level permissions without realizing that all jobs inherit those permissions.
>
> Furthermore, users often don't realize that the _default_ `GITHUB_TOKEN` permissions can be very broad, meaning that workflows that don't configure any permissions at all can _still_ provide excessive credentials to their individual jobs.
>
> **Remediation**
> In general, permissions should be declared as minimally as possible, and as close to their usage site as possible.
>
> In practice, this means that workflows should almost always set `permissions: {}` at the workflow level to disable all permissions by default, and then set specific job-level permissions as needed.

Refs:
* https://docs.zizmor.sh/audits/#excessive-permissions
* https://github.com/GitHubSecurityLab/actions-permissions/tree/main/monitor
@jrfnl jrfnl added this to the 1.3.4 milestone Sep 19, 2025
@jrfnl jrfnl merged commit 5de1cbd into master Sep 19, 2025
6 of 8 checks passed
@jrfnl jrfnl deleted the feature/ghactions-set-minimal-permissions branch September 19, 2025 17:36
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