@babel/runtime version 7.5.0 introduces a minor update over the previous stable version, 7.4.5, primarily focusing on internal dependency adjustments and package improvements. Both versions serve the purpose of providing Babel's modular runtime helpers, crucial for enabling modern JavaScript features in environments that lack native support.
The core functionality remains consistent between the two versions, with both relying on regenerator-runtime version ^0.13.2 for generator and async function support. The key difference lies in the devDependencies. Version 7.5.0 upgrades its @babel/helpers dependency to ^7.5.0 from ^7.4.4 in version 7.4.5. This suggests improvements or bug fixes within Babel's helper functions used during the compilation process.
For developers, the update from 7.4.5 to 7.5.0 implies enhanced stability and potentially better performance during code transpilation, stemming from the updated @babel/helpers. The dist metadata also reveals a slight increase in the fileCount (from 144 to 146) and unpackedSize (from 86052 to 87509), indicating minor additions or changes to the included runtime files. While both versions are licensed under MIT and maintained by Sebastian McKenzie, developers should upgrade to the newer version (7.5.0) to benefit from the latest optimizations and fixes in Babel's helper functions, promoting more efficient and reliable JavaScript compilation workflows.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.5.0 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.