`timing_attack`

CWE-208

Timing Attack — a PullGuard finding type. Findings of this type appear in the PR comment, Step Summary, SARIF (GitHub Security tab / IDE viewers), and the HTML report, each with severity, location, and the remediation guidance below.

How to fix

Use constant-time comparison for secrets / tokens / signatures trivial effort

// WRONG — early exit leaks prefix match length
if (providedToken === expectedToken) { ... }

// RIGHT — Node
import { timingSafeEqual } from "node:crypto";
timingSafeEqual(Buffer.from(a), Buffer.from(b));

// RIGHT — Python
import hmac
hmac.compare_digest(a, b)

// RIGHT — Java
MessageDigest.isEqual(a, b);

Triage

Suppress a confirmed non-issue with a committed .pullguardignore entry (pullguard ignore locally, or comment /pullguard ignore <fingerprint> <reason> on the PR — the fingerprint is printed in the PR comment’s Triage section). Entries support expiresAt for time-boxed snoozes.

Security findings at major or critical severity — and any critical finding — always surface: .pullguardignore cannot hide them. The reviewed paths that keep them visible are acknowledged (reviewed, stays in reports) and, for a confirmed false positive, a reasoned false_positive entry — visible and audited, excluded only from the merge block.