Babel-preset-react-app is a crucial tool for developers using Create React App, streamlining the process of transforming modern JavaScript and JSX code into browser-compatible formats. Version 2.1.1 offers subtle but important improvements over its predecessor, version 2.1.0. Both versions share the core functionality, relying on Babel presets and plugins like babel-preset-env, babel-preset-react, and babel-plugin-transform-runtime to handle syntax transformations, polyfills, and other crucial aspects of modern JavaScript compilation. They both offer out-of-the-box support for JSX, React's specific syntax, and advanced features like class properties and object rest/spread operators.
However, a key difference lies in the specific transformations included. Version 2.1.0 included babel-plugin-transform-es2015-parameters, which is not present in version 2.1.1. At the same time version 2.1.1 has no babel-plugin-transform-es2015-parameters. The upgrade focuses on refining existing transformations rather than introducing major architectural changes; it possibly reflects an adjustment in the best practices or optimizations of the tooling chain. If you are using babel-preset-react-app you should stick to the more updated version of the package. Choosing the right babel-preset-react-app version ensures your Create React App project benefits from the latest compatible JavaScript features and transformations, leading to optimized performance and a smoother development experience.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 2.1.1 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