Protecting Git Repositories Against Malicious Branch Names and Reflog Poisoning

Enforcing Cryptographic Commit Attribution

Anyone can configure Git locally with git config user.name "CEO" and commit code under another person's name. In regulated industries (fintech, banking, healthcare), repositories must enforce cryptographically verified GPG or SSH commit signatures.

Branch Protection Best Practices

• Require linear commit history (no merge commits in production branches).
• Enforce peer review approvals from designated code owners.
• Require status checks to pass before merging, with branch up-to-date enforcement.