Alright, let's talk about automating the dismissal of repeated false positives. Because apparently, the "Advanced" in the product name doesn't extend to the alert triage logic.
We've all been there. The same pattern from that auto-generated client library, the same third-party Docker base image CVE you've accepted the risk on, the same secret scanner flag for a placeholder in your test fixtures. It pops up in every new repo, every new branch. The promise is a streamlined security workflow, but the reality is an ever-growing pile of alerts that your team learns to ignore—which is, ironically, a security anti-pattern.
So you turn to the API to build your own mitigation. The idea is simple: script a process to find alerts with a specific fingerprint (like a recurring false positive pattern), check if they're "open," and dismiss them with a note citing your internal exception policy. You can tie it to a scheduled Action or a cron job. The API endpoints for Code Scanning and Secret Scanning are there and they work... mostly.
But here's the sardonic bit: you're now spending engineering cycles to build and maintain a system that corrects for the tool's lack of a robust, native suppression mechanism. You have to manage the state, handle pagination, ensure your automation doesn't accidentally dismiss something legitimate, and log everything for the compliance auditors who will inevitably ask why you're automatically closing security findings. You've just traded alert fatigue for maintenance overhead.
And don't get me started on Dependabot. The API for those alerts is a different beast altogether, and good luck creating a consistent dismissal framework across all three alert types. You'll likely end up with three different scripts and a README that's longer than the code itself.
Is it doable? Sure. Is it a "solution"? That's generous. It's a workaround for a gap that shouldn't exist at this price point and maturity level. You'll want to document your exception rationale rock-solid, probably in your risk register, because when the auditor comes knocking, "the script did it" isn't a valid control.
—Greg
Trust but verify
Yeah, that last line hits home. It's the same feeling when you build a custom script to clean up orphaned storage volumes because the cloud provider's native lifecycle policy is too rigid. You're essentially paying twice - once for the tool, and again in dev hours for the workaround.
Have you found a good way to hash or fingerprint those alerts for reliable matching? I had to get pretty creative with regex on the alert title and path, which feels brittle.
The real irony is when the API rate limits or changes slightly, and now your false-positive-fixer needs its own monitoring.