@babel/runtime v7.7.5 represents a small but potentially impactful update over the previous stable version, v7.7.4. Both versions provide Babel's modular runtime helpers, essential for projects leveraging modern JavaScript features that require translation for older environments. Both rely on regenerator-runtime, ensuring support for async/await functionality. Both also share the same development dependency, @babel/helpers, highlighting consistent internal tooling.
The key difference lies in the release date and unpacked size. Version 7.7.5 was released on December 6, 2019, about two weeks after 7.7.4's release on November 22, 2019. While both versions contain 151 files, 7.7.5 boasts a slightly smaller unpacked size of 90,797 bytes, compared to 7.7.4's 91,503 bytes. This suggests potential optimizations or minor refactoring that reduced the overall footprint.
For developers, this implies that upgrading to v7.7.5 is likely a safe and potentially beneficial move. The reduced size could translate to slightly faster installation times and a marginally smaller impact on bundle size, especially crucial for performance-sensitive applications. Given the shared dependencies and development dependencies, the update is unlikely to introduce breaking changes. Therefore, developers seeking the latest refinements and a slightly leaner runtime should consider upgrading to @babel/runtime v7.7.5. This package is crucial for modern javascript development, enabling broad compatibility across different environments.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 7.7.5 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.