[Support Escalation] Copilot CLI auto-update check makes unauthenticated API request, causing rate limit errors in shared-NAT environments

[domusicman]

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Why are you seeing this issue?

This is a support escalation. Thank you for doing your part to keep GitHub customers happy!

Severity

• sev1 — Engineering must respond, when paged, within 1 hour
• sev2 — Engineering must respond to this issue within 1 business day
• sev3 — Engineering must respond to this issue within 3 business days

Service

copilot-cli

Context

GitHub Support Plan

• Top 20
• Premium Plus
• Premium
• Enterprise
• Free/Pro/Team

GitHub Products Impacted

• GitHub.com (including GHEC)
• GitHub Enterprise Server
• Proxima (ghe.com)

Customer Impact

• Enterprise: N/A
• Organization: N/A
• Repository: N/A
• User: @RyanCavanaugh (reporter) — multiple Microsoft DevBox users affected via shared NAT

Zendesk Ticket(s)

• https://github.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/4403370

Issue

Copilot CLI 1.0.48 makes an unauthenticated request to the GitHub Releases API when performing an auto-update check at startup or when running /update. In environments where many users share a single egress IP (such as Microsoft DevBox, where 70.37.26.x is a common NAT exit), this exhausts the unauthenticated rate limit (60 req/hr per IP), causing the CLI to fail on startup with:

Error auto updating: Failed to fetch latest release: HttpError: API rate limit exceeded for 70.37.26.133.
(But here's the good news: Authenticated requests get a higher rate limit...)

The user is already authenticated — /user returns their identity — but the release check does not use the authenticated credential from gh auth. This affects every Microsoft DevBox user on the same NAT simultaneously.

Related open issue with the same root cause: #3383

To Reproduce

1. Authenticate: gh auth login
2. From a shared-NAT environment (corporate network, DevBox, etc.), launch Copilot CLI or run /update
3. Observe rate limit error for the unauthenticated IP despite user being logged in

Expected behavior
The auto-update/release check should use the authenticated token from gh auth (or GH_TOKEN / GITHUB_TOKEN when set) so the request is attributed to the user rather than the bare IP.

Additional context

• CLI version: 1.0.48
• Platform: Microsoft DevBox (Azure-managed VMs, egress IPs in 70.37.26.x range)
• Multiple users on the same tenant/NAT are blocked simultaneously
• Workaround being tested: export GH_TOKEN="$(gh auth token)" before launching

cc: @github/copilot-cli

Support Squad: @github/support-squad-worktent