Babel plugin transform ES2015 modules to CommonJS, versions 6.7.7 and 6.7.4, offer developers a crucial tool for bridging the gap between modern JavaScript syntax and older environments. Both versions essentially perform the same function: converting ES2015 module syntax (import/export) into the widely supported CommonJS format, ensuring compatibility across different platforms and Node.js versions. The core functionality centers on enabling developers to leverage the benefits of modular code organization in environments that haven't fully adopted ES modules. A key benefit of using this plugin is the ability to write cleaner, more maintainable code with ES2015 syntax while maintaining broad compatibility.
The primary difference lies in the dependency updates. Version 6.7.7 sees an update to babel-types from "^6.7.0" to "^6.7.7". While the core function remains identical, this upgrade likely incorporates bug fixes, performance improvements, or new features within the babel-types dependency itself; a change probably related to specific updates on how babel handles the type of the AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) it manipulates, it could be important for developers relying on the latest features and bug fixes within Babel's broader ecosystem. This minor version bump suggests that 6.7.7 provides a more refined and stable experience, addressing any potential issues encountered in the previous 6.7.4 version related to type management. Both versions rely on babel-runtime, babel-template, and babel-plugin-transform-strict-mode, indicating a consistent dependency structure for the fundamental transformation process; babel-helper-plugin-test-runner is for testing the plugin itself and it's unchanged in both, so that's not something that developers should worry about when using it directly.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 6.7.7 of the package
Babel vulnerable to arbitrary code execution when compiling specifically crafted malicious code
Using Babel to compile code that was specifically crafted by an attacker can lead to arbitrary code execution during compilation, when using plugins that rely on the path.evaluate()or path.evaluateTruthy() internal Babel methods.
Known affected plugins are:
@babel/plugin-transform-runtime@babel/preset-env when using its useBuiltIns option@babel/helper-define-polyfill-provider, such as babel-plugin-polyfill-corejs3, babel-plugin-polyfill-corejs2, babel-plugin-polyfill-es-shims, babel-plugin-polyfill-regeneratorNo other plugins under the @babel/ namespace are impacted, but third-party plugins might be.
Users that only compile trusted code are not impacted.
The vulnerability has been fixed in @babel/traverse@7.23.2.
Babel 6 does not receive security fixes anymore (see Babel's security policy), hence there is no patch planned for babel-traverse@6.
@babel/traverse to v7.23.2 or higher. You can do this by deleting it from your package manager's lockfile and re-installing the dependencies. @babel/core >=7.23.2 will automatically pull in a non-vulnerable version.@babel/traverse and are using one of the affected packages mentioned above, upgrade them to their latest version to avoid triggering the vulnerable code path in affected @babel/traverse versions:
@babel/plugin-transform-runtime v7.23.2@babel/preset-env v7.23.2@babel/helper-define-polyfill-provider v0.4.3babel-plugin-polyfill-corejs2 v0.4.6babel-plugin-polyfill-corejs3 v0.8.5babel-plugin-polyfill-es-shims v0.10.0babel-plugin-polyfill-regenerator v0.5.3