GitHub's secret scanning feature is designed to be efficient by de-duplicating alerts. When a secret is detected, GitHub generates a single alert for that unique secret value within a specific repository. If the exact same secret value is committed again in different files or locations within the same repository, these new instances are associated with the existing alert and do not generate new, separate alerts. This ensures that repository administrators are not overwhelmed with redundant notifications for a single compromised secret.

B. This is incorrect because GitHub's secret scanning logic consolidates findings for the same secret value into a single alert per repository.

C. This is incorrect. The system is designed to create one alert per unique secret, not multiple alerts for repeated instances.

D. This is incorrect. The alerting mechanism de-duplicates identical secrets within the same repository to prevent alert fatigue.

1. GitHub Docs

"Managing alerts from secret scanning": Under the section "About secret scanning alerts

" the documentation states

"GitHub generates one alert per unique secret detected

per repository. If the same secret is present in multiple places in one repository

you will only see one alert for that secret

with information about each location." This directly confirms that multiple instances of the same secret result in only one alert.