Babel preset stage-3 offers a convenient collection of Babel plugins that enable support for JavaScript features in the "stage 3" proposal level. Stage 3 means the feature is nearly finalized and likely to be included in the ECMAScript standard, making it relatively safe for developers to adopt.
Comparing versions 6.2.4 and 6.3.13, the key difference lies in the updated dependencies. Both versions include babel-plugin-transform-async-to-generator and babel-plugin-transform-exponentiation-operator, essential plugins for handling async/await functions and the exponentiation operator (**), respectively. The newer version 6.3.13 updates these dependencies to their ^6.3.13 counterparts from ^6.2.4 in the older version. This means developers using babel-preset-stage-3:6.3.13 benefit from the latest bug fixes, performance improvements, and potentially new features within those specific plugins since it pulls compatible versions and potentially newer minor or patch releases.
For developers, sticking with the latest minor version, babel-preset-stage-3:6.3.13 (within the major version 6), is generally recommended for stability and to leverage any improvements made to the included transformations. These transformations allow cleaner, more modern JavaScript syntax while ensuring compatibility with older environments through transpilation. The releaseDate also shows the newer version is more recent so it makes sense to update to it. Remember that using stage-3 features comes with a small risk that the specification might change before standardization, although it's unlikely at this stage.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 6.3.13 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