GitHub Actions

Run cache-detective in your GitHub Actions workflows to catch cache misconfigurations before they reach production.

There is no cerberauth/cache-detective-action composite action yet — install the CLI directly (via go install or the Docker image) as a workflow step.

Setup step

- name: Install cache-detective
  run: go install github.com/cerberauth/cache-detective@latest

Or use the Docker image to avoid needing Go:

- name: Scan for cache misconfigurations
  run: |
    docker run --rm ghcr.io/cerberauth/cache-detective \
      scan --url "$TARGET_URL" --output-format json --output report.json
  env:
    TARGET_URL: ${{ vars.TARGET_URL }}

Caution

--aggressive intentionally probes for exploitable cache poisoning/deception behavior. Only point it at systems you own or have explicit written permission to test, and store target URLs/credentials in encrypted secrets.

Example: scan on pull request

name: Cache behavior scan

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  cache-scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7

      - name: Install cache-detective
        run: go install github.com/cerberauth/cache-detective@latest

      - name: Scan staging deployment
        run: cache-detective scan --url ${{ vars.STAGING_URL }} --sqa-opt-out

cache-detective scan exits non-zero when a check fails to execute (network errors, etc). Findings themselves don’t currently fail the build on their own — pair it with diff (below) or a jq assertion over the JSON output to gate on specific findings.

Common use cases

Fail the build on a specific finding

- name: Assert no cache deception findings
  run: |
    cache-detective scan --url ${{ vars.STAGING_URL }} --aggressive --sqa-opt-out \
      --output-format json --output report.json --quiet
    count=$(jq '[.findings[] | select(.title == "Cache deception via path confusion")] | length' report.json)
    if [ "$count" -gt 0 ]; then
      echo "::error::Cache deception detected"
      exit 1
    fi

Detect cache-config drift between deploys

Save each scan’s JSON output as a build artifact, then diff the current scan against the previous one:

- name: Scan current deployment
  run: cache-detective scan --url ${{ vars.STAGING_URL }} --sqa-opt-out --output-format json --output after.json --quiet

- name: Download previous scan
  uses: actions/download-artifact@v8
  with:
    name: cache-scan-baseline
    path: .

- name: Compare against baseline
  run: cache-detective diff before.json after.json

- name: Upload as new baseline
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v7
  with:
    name: cache-scan-baseline
    path: after.json

cache-detective diff exits non-zero when findings were added or changed severity, so it can gate the build directly. See diff for details.

Crawl a site instead of scanning one URL

- name: Crawl and scan
  run: |
    cache-detective scan --url ${{ vars.STAGING_URL }} --crawl --path-prefix /blog \
      --sqa-opt-out --output-format json --output report.json