@babel/runtime versions 7.13.17 and 7.13.16 represent incremental updates to Babel's modular runtime helpers, essential for projects leveraging modern JavaScript features while ensuring compatibility with older environments. Both versions maintain the core functionality of providing pre-compiled helper functions, reducing code duplication and minimizing bundle sizes. They share the same "regenerator-runtime" dependency (version ^0.13.4), crucial for supporting async/await syntax. License and repository information are also identical, solidifying the consistent open-source nature of the project and its location within the Babel ecosystem.
The key difference lies in the release timing and unpacked size. Version 7.13.17 was released on April 20, 2021, at 23:19:08.267Z, approximately 12 hours after version 7.13.16, which was released at 11:21:11.668Z. The unpacked size also shows a minor variation of 22 bytes, dropping from 143508 to 143486. While the file count remains at 181, these minor size adjustments likely indicate internal optimization or bug fixes.
For developers, this suggests that version 7.13.17 is a maintenance release. Upgrading from 7.13.16 is recommended to benefit from the latest improvements, however minimal. Given the shared dependency and identical license, the upgrade process is likely straightforward. Developers should consult the Babel changelog for a full list of specific changes if more granular details are necessary. Keeping @babel/runtime up-to-date ensures efficient and compliant transpilation of your modern JavaScript code.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.13.17 of the package
Babel has inefficient RegExp complexity in generated code with .replace when transpiling named capturing groups
When using Babel to compile regular expression named capturing groups, Babel will generate a polyfill for the .replace method that has quadratic complexity on some specific replacement pattern strings (i.e. the second argument passed to .replace).
Your generated code is vulnerable if all the following conditions are true:
.replace method on a regular expression that contains named capturing groups.replaceIf you are using @babel/preset-env with the targets option, the transform that injects the vulnerable code is automatically enabled if:
You can verify what transforms @babel/preset-env is using by enabling the debug option.
This problem has been fixed in @babel/helpers and @babel/runtime 7.26.10 and 8.0.0-alpha.17, please upgrade. It's likely that you do not directly depend on @babel/helpers, and instead you depend on @babel/core (which itself depends on @babel/helpers). Upgrading to @babel/core 7.26.10 is not required, but it guarantees that you are on a new enough @babel/helpers version.
Please note that just updating your Babel dependencies is not enough: you will also need to re-compile your code.
If you are passing user-provided strings as the second argument of .replace on regular expressions that contain named capturing groups, validate the input and make sure it does not contain the substring $< if it's then not followed by > (possibly with other characters in between).
This vulnerability was reported and fixed in https://github.com/babel/babel/pull/17173.