OIDC

OIDC Configured but GitHub Actions Still Vulnerable: Megalodon and actions-cool Attacks Expose Runner Risks

Even after widespread adoption of OIDC for temporary cloud credentials in GitHub Actions, two major attacks in May 2026 demonstrated that the approach remains insufficient on its own. Attackers compromised actions-cool/issues-helper by substituting action tags to execute malicious commits that read Runner.Worker memory. The Megalodon campaign injected malicious workflows into 5,561 public repositories, harvesting environment variables, credential files, kubeconfig, SSH keys, and OIDC tokens. OIDC eliminates long-lived AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID secrets but leaves short-lived tokens exposed inside the runner during job execution. Four mandatory protection layers are now required: strict cloud trust policies using StringEquals on the sub claim, job-level id-token: write permissions, outbound traffic controls such as Harden-Runner, and CODEOWNERS enforcement on .github/workflows/. GitHub Environments with mandatory reviewers add an essential human-approval gate that would have disrupted the Megalodon attack path.

Rethinking SSO: Centralized User Data Provision and Authorization Processing in Corporate Systems

The article examines Single Sign-On systems not merely as authentication gateways but as architectural hubs for delivering user attributes and executing additional authorization logic. It highlights how SSO can aggregate data from sources like Active Directory, HR systems, and IDM platforms, then deliver it via OIDC claims to downstream applications. The discussion covers the shift from fragmented integrations across dozens of apps to a single trusted enforcement point using standards such as aggregated and distributed claims. It also explores the authorization pipeline where SSO acts as a Policy Enforcement Point querying external Policy Decision Points via the AuthZEN Authorization API 1.0. Practical examples include electronic business cards, role assignment, access routing, and mandatory MFA checks before token issuance. The piece stresses maintaining data ownership with source systems while establishing SSO as the single point of trust for applications.

GitHub Experiences Major Global Outage Affecting API, Actions, Copilot and Multiple Core Services

On August 17, GitHub suffered a widespread outage that impacted nearly all major platform functions including the web interface, API, Issues, Pull Requests, Actions, Webhooks, Pages, Git Operations, and Copilot. Approximately 20% of requests to the site and API failed during peak impact, with archive and raw repository content loads reaching around 50% error rates. Corporate authentication mechanisms such as SAML and OIDC, along with SCIM and Team Sync services, were also disrupted while Codespaces remained operational. The incident began around 13:40 UTC with progressive degradation across components, prompting GitHub to identify and mitigate the root cause. Services are gradually recovering but error rates remain slightly elevated, and the incident has not yet been fully closed. Parallel issues were reported in other Microsoft services including Teams and Copilot, with unconfirmed speculation linking the event to Amazon Web Services network problems.