@babel/cli versions 7.10.0 and 7.8.4 serve as command-line interfaces, empowering developers to transpile modern JavaScript code into browser-compatible versions using Babel. Both versions share core functionalities and dependencies, including tools like glob for file matching, slash for cross-platform path handling, lodash for utility functions, chokidar for file watching (also an optional dependency), make-dir for directory creation, commander for argument parsing, and libraries for source map manipulation (source-map, convert-source-map). They are licensed under MIT, ensuring broad usage rights.
The key distinctions lie primarily in the versions of their development dependencies. Version 7.10.0 upgrades its @babel/core dependency to version 7.10.0, reflecting the corresponding core Babel updates, while 7.8.4 uses @babel/core version 7.8.4. This indicates that 7.10.0 incorporates the latest features, bug fixes, and performance improvements from the Babel core at the time of its release. Developers leveraging @babel/cli 7.10.0 are likely to benefit from enhanced support for newer JavaScript syntax and proposals. Furthermore, there is a small increase in unpackedSize, suggesting potential additions or modifications to the CLI's internal code or assets with the newer version. Developers upgrading should consult the Babel changelog for a comprehensive list of core changes to ensure compatibility and leverage added capabilities.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.10.0 of the package
Uncontrolled resource consumption in braces
The NPM package braces fails to limit the number of characters it can handle, which could lead to Memory Exhaustion. In lib/parse.js, if a malicious user sends "imbalanced braces" as input, the parsing will enter a loop, which will cause the program to start allocating heap memory without freeing it at any moment of the loop. Eventually, the JavaScript heap limit is reached, and the program will crash.
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in micromatch
The NPM package micromatch prior to version 4.0.8 is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS). The vulnerability occurs in micromatch.braces() in index.js because the pattern .* will greedily match anything. By passing a malicious payload, the pattern matching will keep backtracking to the input while it doesn't find the closing bracket. As the input size increases, the consumption time will also increase until it causes the application to hang or slow down. There was a merged fix but further testing shows the issue persisted prior to https://github.com/micromatch/micromatch/pull/266. This issue should be mitigated by using a safe pattern that won't start backtracking the regular expression due to greedy matching.
