The case for a cooldown: Why Dependabot now waits before issuing version updates

In September 2025, an attacker phished the credentials of a single npm maintainer and published booby-trapped versions of chalk , debug , and around a dozen other packages that are together downloaded more than 2 billion times a week. The code rewrote cryptocurrency wallet addresses inside any browser app that loaded it. The poisoned versions were live for roughly two hours before the community caught them and npm pulled them.

Two hours is a fast response. However, it is also more than enough time for an automated update tool to see the new version, open a pull request, and put it in front of your team, because version update tooling is built to grab the newest release the moment it lands. That pattern sits behind a growing share of supply chain attacks.

The malicious code rides in on a brand-new release, is published to a public registry, and gets pulled into build pipelines within minutes, before a human or a scanner has even looked at it. A cooldown changes that math. Waiting a few days before adopting a new release gives maintainers, security researchers, and automated scanners time to spot a malicious version and get it pulled before it ever reaches your pull requests.

For non-security version bumps, Dependabot now waits at least three days after a release is published before opening a pull request. yml still controls the behavior, though, so you can choose a different cooldown parameter that fits your project.   The new three-day cooldown default applies only to version updates .

Security updates still open right away, since a delay there would hold back a fix for a flaw that is already public.   Case studies and GitHub Advisory Database data When attackers compromise a popular package, the poisoned version tends to have a short lifespan. It gets published, spreads through whatever installs it, and gets caught, usually within hours.

The previous example was live for only two hours. js , Axios , and ua-parser-js each caught within a few hours of publication. More generally, GitHub sees this pattern directly through the GitHub Advisory Database , which catalogs open source security advisories across ecosystems.

In the year ending May 2026, the database published more than 6,500 npm malware advisories, up from roughly 6,200 the year before, which adds up to approximately 18 newly cataloged malicious npm packages every day. A cooldown keeps you out of that opening window and lets a release accumulate some scrutiny before it reaches you. Why three days Published malware targeting popular packages tends to get caught fast.

js, ua-parser-js, and Ledger Connect Kit were each pulled within hours of publication, and a cooldown could have filtered out the majority of these short-lived publishes before anyone installed them. Three days as the default balances two goals: it pushes you past the window where most of these attacks live, and it doesn’t hold your dependencies back longer than necessary. Other community members have also landed on a three-day cooldown (though some go even longer), so this default behavior keeps Dependabot consistent as developers move between tools.