Secret validation is a feature where GitHub attempts to verify a detected secret with the corresponding service provider (e.g., AWS, Azure). If the secret is confirmed as active or "valid," it signifies a live, exploitable credential, representing an immediate and high-priority security risk. This allows security teams to prioritize their response efforts on alerts for active secrets over those that may be stale or revoked, directly addressing the need to focus on the most urgent threats.

A. Non-provider patterns allow you to define custom regular expressions to find proprietary or unique secrets, but this feature does not inherently prioritize the alerts it generates.

B. Push protection is a preventative feature that blocks secrets from being pushed to a repository; it does not help in prioritizing alerts that have already been generated.

C. Custom pattern dry runs are used to test the effectiveness and noise level of a new custom pattern before enabling it, not for prioritizing existing, active alerts.

1. GitHub Docs

"Managing alerts from secret scanning." Under the section "About alert prioritization

" it states: "To help you prioritize alerts

secret scanning alerts include information about the validity of the detected secret. If we can

we'll tell you if the secret is active. We check the validity of secrets by sending them to the relevant partner."

2. GitHub Docs

"About secret scanning." In the section "About secret validity checks

" it explains: "When a secret is detected in a public repository on GitHub.com

GitHub notifies the service provider and the provider validates the secret. The provider then contacts the owner of the secret to let them know that their secret has been exposed." This process confirms the role of validation in determining the active status and risk of a secret.