@babel/cli version 7.8.0 is a minor update to the Babel command-line interface, building upon the functionality of the previous stable version, 7.7.7. Both versions provide the essential tools for transpiling JavaScript code using Babel, allowing developers to leverage the latest JavaScript features while maintaining compatibility with older environments. Key dependencies like glob, slash, lodash, chokidar, make-dir, commander, source-map, convert-source-map and fs-readdir-recursive remain consistent, ensuring core functionalities are preserved. The license stays as MIT.
The crucial difference lies in the updated development dependencies. Version 7.8.0 upgrades @babel/core and @babel/helper-fixtures to version 7.8.0, reflecting internal improvements and potentially bug fixes within the Babel ecosystem. In comparison, version 7.7.7 used "@babel/core":"^7.7.7", "@babel/helper-fixtures":"^7.6.3". This upgrade in @babel/core is the version that aligns the core compiler with the CLI. While seemingly minor, this synchronization often incorporates bug fixes, performance enhancements, and compatibility adjustments that directly benefit developers using the CLI for their projects. The dist object shows that version 7.8.0 has a slightly larger unpackedSize (36019) than version 7.7.7 (35048). Version 7.8.0 was released on "2020-01-12T00:15:55.930Z" and version 7.7.7 was released on "2019-12-19T00:53:06.847Z". Developers are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version, 7.8.0, to take advantage of these improvements and maintain compatibility within their Babel toolchain.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.8.0 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.
