Babel-loader is a crucial tool for modern web development, bridging the gap between cutting-edge JavaScript syntax and the compatibility requirements of various browsers. Comparing versions 6.4.1 and 6.4.0 reveals subtle but important refinements for developers leveraging webpack and Babel in their projects. Both versions share identical core dependencies, including mkdirp, loader-utils, object-assign, and find-cache-dir, crucial for file system operations, webpack loader utilities, object manipulation, and cache directory discovery respectively. The development dependencies, which are essential for testing and building the package, also remain consistent across both, encompassing testing frameworks like ava and nyc, linting tools such as eslint, and build tools including webpack and babel-cli. This ensures a stable and reliable development environment. Specifically, both versions boast support for React projects as seen in their devDependencies.
The peer dependencies, webpack and babel-core, remain unchanged, indicating stable integration points with these core tools. This suggests that the upgrade from 6.4.0 to 6.4.1 doesn't introduce any breaking changes in terms of core compatibility. The difference lies primarily in bug fixes and potential minor improvements implemented in version 6.4.1. Furthermore, the release dates tell an important thing: version 6.4.1 came out just 10 days after version 6.4.0, which usually means a quick patch for some regression issue. While the exact nature of these fixes remains undetailed in the provided data, developers employing babel-loader should consider the upgrade for potentially enhanced stability and performance, particularly if encountering issues present in version 6.4.0.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 6.4.1 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...');
}