Babel Preset Stage 3 offers a convenient way for developers to incorporate JavaScript features that are currently in Stage 3 of the TC39 standardization process into their projects. Staying at Stage 3 signifies that the features are nearing finalization and are considered reasonably stable for experimentation and adoption. Comparing version 6.2.4 with the older 6.1.18 reveals subtle yet important differences, primarily concerning the versions of the underlying Babel plugins it depends upon.
Both versions support crucial transformations: babel-plugin-transform-async-to-generator, enabling the use of async/await syntax in environments without native support, and babel-plugin-transform-exponentiation-operator, allowing the use of the ** operator for exponentiation. The key distinction lies in their respective plugin versions. Version 6.2.4 utilizes babel-plugin-transform-async-to-generator and babel-plugin-transform-exponentiation-operator at version ^6.2.4, while version 6.1.18 relies on version ^6.1.18 of these plugins.
This seemingly minor version bump implies improvements, bug fixes, and potential performance enhancements packaged within the newer plugin versions. Developers upgrading to Babel Preset Stage 3 version 6.2.4 can expect the latest refinements in how asynchronous functions and the exponentiation operator are transformed, contributing to potentially more efficient and reliable code. The update also suggests that the maintainers are actively keeping the preset synchronized with the evolving landscape of Stage 3 features and the Babel ecosystem.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 6.2.4 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