Babel-loader is a crucial webpack plugin that allows developers to seamlessly integrate Babel, the popular JavaScript compiler, into their webpack build process. This enables the use of next-generation JavaScript features in projects while ensuring compatibility with older browsers. Comparing versions 6.3.2 and 6.3.1, the core functionality remains consistent, focusing on leveraging Babel to transform JavaScript code. Both versions boast identical dependencies, including essential packages like mkdirp, loader-utils, object-assign, and find-cache-dir, reflecting a stable dependency management core focusing on improved webpack integration.
The devDependencies also remain unchanged, highlighting a continued commitment to testing, linting, and code coverage through tools like ava, nyc, eslint, codecov and plugins like istanbul, babel-eslint and flowtype, promising code quality and consistent development practices. The key difference lies in the release date with version 6.3.2 released a day after version 6.3.1. While the package metadata doesn't explicitly detail specific bug fixes or feature enhancements between these minor versions it suggests a rapid response or small adjustment addressing issues discovered shortly after the release of 6.3.1. To get specific differences we would need to access the repository and analyze the changelog between the two versions.
For developers, babel-loader simplifies the process of using modern JavaScript syntax and features within webpack-managed projects. The unchanged peerDependencies ensure compatibility with webpack 1, 2 and babel-core 6.0.0 and above and makes it simple to use babel-loader with well established projects. Always refer to the changelog for a full list of changes especially when upgrading.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 6.3.2 of the package
Prototype pollution in webpack loader-utils
Prototype pollution vulnerability in function parseQuery in parseQuery.js in webpack loader-utils prior to version 2.0.3 via the name variable in parseQuery.js.
Prototype Pollution in JSON5 via Parse Method
The parse method of the JSON5 library before and including version 2.2.1 does not restrict parsing of keys named __proto__, allowing specially crafted strings to pollute the prototype of the resulting object.
This vulnerability pollutes the prototype of the object returned by JSON5.parse and not the global Object prototype, which is the commonly understood definition of Prototype Pollution. However, polluting the prototype of a single object can have significant security impact for an application if the object is later used in trusted operations.
This vulnerability could allow an attacker to set arbitrary and unexpected keys on the object returned from JSON5.parse. The actual impact will depend on how applications utilize the returned object and how they filter unwanted keys, but could include denial of service, cross-site scripting, elevation of privilege, and in extreme cases, remote code execution.
This vulnerability is patched in json5 v2.2.2 and later. A patch has also been backported for json5 v1 in versions v1.0.2 and later.
Suppose a developer wants to allow users and admins to perform some risky operation, but they want to restrict what non-admins can do. To accomplish this, they accept a JSON blob from the user, parse it using JSON5.parse, confirm that the provided data does not set some sensitive keys, and then performs the risky operation using the validated data:
const JSON5 = require('json5');
const doSomethingDangerous = (props) => {
if (props.isAdmin) {
console.log('Doing dangerous thing as admin.');
} else {
console.log('Doing dangerous thing as user.');
}
};
const secCheckKeysSet = (obj, searchKeys) => {
let searchKeyFound = false;
Object.keys(obj).forEach((key) => {
if (searchKeys.indexOf(key) > -1) {
searchKeyFound = true;
}
});
return searchKeyFound;
};
const props = JSON5.parse('{"foo": "bar"}');
if (!secCheckKeysSet(props, ['isAdmin', 'isMod'])) {
doSomethingDangerous(props); // "Doing dangerous thing as user."
} else {
throw new Error('Forbidden...');
}
If the user attempts to set the isAdmin key, their request will be rejected:
const props = JSON5.parse('{"foo": "bar", "isAdmin": true}');
if (!secCheckKeysSet(props, ['isAdmin', 'isMod'])) {
doSomethingDangerous(props);
} else {
throw new Error('Forbidden...'); // Error: Forbidden...
}
However, users can instead set the __proto__ key to {"isAdmin": true}. JSON5 will parse this key and will set the isAdmin key on the prototype of the returned object, allowing the user to bypass the security check and run their request as an admin:
const props = JSON5.parse('{"foo": "bar", "__proto__": {"isAdmin": true}}');
if (!secCheckKeysSet(props, ['isAdmin', 'isMod'])) {
doSomethingDangerous(props); // "Doing dangerous thing as admin."
} else {
throw new Error('Forbidden...');
}