@babel/runtime versions 7.14.0 and 7.13.17 are incremental releases of Babel's modular runtime helpers, essential for projects utilizing Babel to transpile modern JavaScript into code compatible with older environments. Both versions share the same core functionality, providing necessary runtime support for features like async/await, generators, and other ES2015+ functionalities. A key dependency for both continues to be regenerator-runtime, ensuring support for generator functions.
The primary difference lies in the updated internal implementation and bug fixes. While the 'dependencies' and 'license' remain constant, the unpacked size of version 7.14.0 sees a slight increase to 143598, compared to 143486 in version 7.13.17, suggesting minor additions or adjustments to the runtime code. The release dates also clearly show that version 7.14.0 was released after 7.13.17.
Developers should upgrade to version 7.14.0 primarily to benefit from the bug fixes and potential performance improvements included in the later release. These refinements, though seemingly small, can contribute to a more stable and efficient application, especially in complex projects heavily reliant on Babel's transpilation processes. Regularly updating @babel/runtime is a good practice to maintain compatibility and take advantage of the ongoing enhancements.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.14.0 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.