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Pushing a branch blocked by push protection

Push protection proactively protects you against leaked secrets in your repositories. You can resolve blocked pushes and, once the detected secret is removed, you can push changes to your working branch from the command line or the web UI.

Who can use this feature?

Push protection is available for organization-owned repositories in GitHub Enterprise Server if your enterprise has a license for GitHub Advanced Security.

For more information, see "Push protection for repositories and organizations."

In this article

About push protection

Push protection helps to prevent security leaks by scanning for secrets before you push changes to your repository.

When you try to push a secret to a repository secured by push protection, GitHub blocks the push. You must remove the secret from your branch before pushing again. For more information on how to resolve a blocked push, see "Resolving a blocked push on the command line" and "Resolving a blocked commit in the web UI" in this article.

If you believe it's safe to allow the secret, you have the option to bypass the protection. For more information, see "Working with push protection."

For information on the secrets and service providers supported for push protection, see "Secret scanning patterns."

Resolving a blocked push on the command line

When you attempt to push a supported secret to a repository secured by push protection, GitHub will block the push. You can remove the secret from your branch or follow a provided URL to allow the push.

Notes:

  • If your Git configuration supports pushes to multiple branches, and not only to the current branch, your push may be blocked due to additional and unintended refs being pushed. For more information, see the push.default options in the Git documentation.
  • If secret scanning upon a push times out, GitHub will still scan your commits for secrets after the push.

Removing a secret introduced by the latest commit on your branch

If the blocked secret was introduced by the latest commit on your branch, you can follow the guidance below.

  1. Remove the secret from your code.
  2. To commit the changes, run git commit --amend. This updates the original commit that introduced the secret instead of creating a new commit.
  3. Push your changes with git push.

Removing a secret introduced by an earlier commit on your branch

You can also remove the secret if the secret appears in an earlier commit in the Git history. To do so, you will need to identify which commit first introduced the secret and modify the commit history with an interactive rebase.

  1. Examine the error message that displayed when you tried to push your branch, which lists all of the commits that contain the secret.

    remote:   —— GitHub Personal Access Token ——————————————————————
remote:    locations:
remote:      - commit: 8728dbe67
remote:        path: README.md:4
remote:      - commit: 03d69e5d3
remote:        path: README.md:4
remote:      - commit: 8053f7b27
remote:        path: README.md:4

  2. Next, run git log to see a full history of all the commits on your branch, along with their corresponding timestamps.

    test-repo (test-branch)]$ git log
commit 8053f7b27 (HEAD -> main)
Author: Octocat <1000+octocat@users.noreply.github.com
Date:   Tue Jan 30 13:03:37 2024 +0100

  my fourth commit message

commit 03d69e5d3
Author: Octocat <1000+octocat@users.noreply.github.com>
Date:   Tue Jan 30 13:02:59 2024 +0100

  my third commit message

commit 8728dbe67
Author: Octocat <1000+octocat@users.noreply.github.com
Date:   Tue Jan 30 13:01:36 2024 +0100

  my second commit message

commit 6057cbe51
Author: Octocat <1000+octocat@users.noreply.github.com
Date:   Tue Jan 30 12:58:24 2024 +0100

  my first commit message

  3. Focusing only on the commits that contain the secret, use the output of git log to identify which commit comes earliest in your Git history.

    • In the example, commit 8728dbe67 was the first commit to contain the secret.

  4. Start an interactive rebase with git rebase -i <COMMIT-ID>~1.

    • For <COMMIT-ID>, use the commit identified in step 3. For example, git rebase -i 8728dbe67~1.

  5. In the editor, choose to edit the commit identified in step 3 by changing pick to edit on the first line of the text.

    edit 8728dbe67 my second commit message
pick 03d69e5d3 my third commit message
pick 8053f7b27 my fourth commit message

  6. Save and close the editor to start the interactive rebase.

  7. Remove the secret from your code.

  8. Commit your changes using git commit --amend.

  9. Run git rebase --continue to finish the rebase.

  10. Push your changes with git push.

Resolving a blocked commit in the web UI

When you use the web UI to attempt to commit a supported secret to a repository secured by push protection, GitHub will block the commit.

You will see a dialog box with information about the secret's location, as well as options allowing you to push the secret. The secret will also be underlined in the file so you can easily find it.

To resolve a blocked commit in the web UI, you need to remove the secret from the file. Once you remove the secret, you will be able to commit your changes.

Alternatively, if you determine that it's safe to allow the secret, use the options displayed in the dialog box to bypass push protection. For more information about bypassing push protection from the web UI, see "Working with push protection."

Further reading