Babel Preset Env version 1.2.0 offers subtle but important improvements over the previous stable version 1.1.11, making it an attractive upgrade for developers. Both versions share the core functionality of intelligently compiling JavaScript based on specified target environments, streamlining the process of achieving cross-browser compatibility and leveraging modern language features. The key difference lies in the updated compat-table dependency. Version 1.2.0 utilizes a newer commit hash (c38f039b8ea7fadf347d3e300fec3611645e31e9) compared to version 1.1.11 (291c758ac618fff6bf5bb2113a5aa046189f93e2). This compat-table update is crucial, as it directly impacts the accuracy and comprehensiveness of browser compatibility data used by babel-preset-env. A more recent compat-table generally translates to better support for newer JavaScript features and more accurate targeting of specific browser versions, potentially leading to smaller and more efficient bundles.
For developers, upgrading to 1.2.0 ensures that Babel is leveraging the most up-to-date information on browser support, which minimizes the risk of including unnecessary polyfills and transformations. Both versions provide a robust set of ES2015 transforms and polyfills. Furthermore, dependencies related to core transformations, such as those for async/await, arrow functions, classes, and destructuring, remain consistent between the two versions, indicating stability in the fundamental transformation logic. This consistency provides reassurance that upgrading won't introduce unexpected behavior shifts in core ES2015 features, while still benefiting from the improvements in environment targeting provided by the dependency update.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.2.0 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