Scope id-token: write to the publishing job

The workflow's top-level permissions: grants no id-token. Only the publish job requests id-token: write, ideally behind a protected environment. Jobs that run tests or install dependencies, where untrusted third-party code executes, never have a publish-capable token in memory to steal.123

permissions:
  contents: read           # workflow default: no id-token

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read        # explicit: no OIDC token minted here
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7
      - run: npm test
  publish:
    needs: test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      id-token: write       # scoped to the publish job only
    environment: release
    steps:
      - uses: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@cef221092ed1bacb1cc03d23a2d87d1d172e277b # v1.14.0

Any job, including untrusted test code, can read the publish token out of runner memory.

permissions:
  contents: read
  id-token: write     # a publish token exists for every job and every step

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: npm test   # runs untrusted dep code with the token in memory
  publish:
    needs: test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@cef221092ed1bacb1cc03d23a2d87d1d172e277b # v1.14.0

Real workflow files from public projects.

  build_publish_image:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      packages: write
      contents: read
      attestations: write
      id-token: write

    if: github.repository == 'vitejs/vite'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      id-token: write

permissions: {}
# ...
  publish:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read

permissions: {}
# ...
    environment: Release
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: write
      id-token: write

When id-token: write sits at the workflow level, the runner mints a publish-capable OIDC token for the entire run, including the test job that executes untrusted dependency code. Any code that runs before the real publish step can read that token out of runner memory and publish a malicious package. This was the third leg of the TanStack 2026 supply-chain compromise: a poisoned cache dumped runner memory and used the workflow-level OIDC token to publish 84 malicious versions. Per-job scoping shrinks the window during which the token exists.

Hand this prompt to your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, and the like) to audit and fix this practice in your own repo.

Inspect this repo's .github/workflows for `id-token: write` declared in a top-level `permissions:` block, which mints an OIDC publish token for every job including ones that run untrusted test or dependency code. Move `id-token: write` out of the workflow level and into only the specific publishing job's `permissions:` block, and leave the other jobs with no `id-token` (or an explicit `contents: read`). Do not touch hardened spellings like `id-token: none` or `id-token: read` elsewhere: only the workflow-level `write` is the finding. Show me the diff and open a PR rather than applying it blindly.

Ground these changes in the upstream docs before you edit: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/security/oidc. If you cannot fetch them, say so rather than guessing, and cite what you used in the PR description.

Automate this with StarSling.

Rather than audit this by hand, install the StarSling GitHub App: it opens a pull request to move your workflows onto StarSling runners, then its agents keep reading your jobs, run logs, and machine telemetry and open pull requests that fix what this page covers, along with caching, parallelization, and test sharding across the rest of your pipeline. Every change arrives as a PR you review and merge.