@babel/cli is a crucial tool for developers using Babel, providing a command-line interface to compile JavaScript files. Comparing versions 7.5.5 and 7.5.0 highlights subtle but important updates. Both versions share the same core functionality and dependencies like glob, slash, mkdirp, chokidar, commander, source-map, output-file-sync, convert-source-map, and fs-readdir-recursive, essential for file manipulation, path handling, and argument parsing.
The key differences lie in the updated versions of development dependencies and one dependency. Version 7.5.5 upgrades @babel/core and @babel/helper-fixtures to version 7.5.5 from 7.5.0 and 7.4.4 respectively. Also the version 7.5.5 upgrades lodash to the 4.17.13 from the 4.17.11 version. These updates likely include bug fixes, performance improvements, and potentially new features within Babel's core compilation process and testing utilities. For developers, this means a more robust and reliable compilation pipeline, especially when using the latest JavaScript syntax and features. Staying up-to-date with the latest version (7.5.5) ensures access to these enhancements and can help avoid compatibility issues or unexpected behavior during the build process. Also, the update to the lodash library should ensure better performances and security. The peer dependency @babel/core remains consistent, requiring at least version 7.0.0, ensuring broad compatibility with existing Babel configurations.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.5.5 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.
