Browserify version 11.0.0 arrives shortly after 10.2.6, bringing subtle but important changes for developers using this popular browser-side require() tool. Both versions maintain the core functionality of bundling Node.js-style modules for the browser, but examining the dependency updates reveals key areas of improvement and potential backward incompatibilities.
Notably, version 11.0.0 upgrades readable-stream from 1.1.13 to ^2.0.2, and stream-browserify from 1.0.0 to 2.0.0. These are major version bumps, suggesting significant changes in the implementation of streams that could affect how Browserify handles data flow. Developers should carefully review their code and test thoroughly to ensure compatibility with the new stream APIs. Another crucial update is the replacement of http-browserify with stream-http. This shift indicates alterations in the way HTTP requests are handled within the browser environment. All the other dependencies have a minor change.
While both versions share the same core development dependencies, these dependency modifications in version 11.0.0 indicates Browserify continues to evolve by leveraging newer and more efficient stream implementations. Developers should assess impact before upgrading to the newer version.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 11.0.0 of the package
Regular Expression Denial of Service in minimatch
Affected versions of minimatch are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service attacks when user input is passed into the pattern argument of minimatch(path, pattern).
var minimatch = require(“minimatch”);
// utility function for generating long strings
var genstr = function (len, chr) {
var result = “”;
for (i=0; i<=len; i++) {
result = result + chr;
}
return result;
}
var exploit = “[!” + genstr(1000000, “\\”) + “A”;
// minimatch exploit.
console.log(“starting minimatch”);
minimatch(“foo”, exploit);
console.log(“finishing minimatch”);
Update to version 3.0.2 or later.
minimatch ReDoS vulnerability
A vulnerability was found in the minimatch package. This flaw allows a Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) when calling the braceExpand function with specific arguments, resulting in a Denial of Service.
Potential Command Injection in shell-quote
Affected versions of shell-quote do not properly escape command line arguments, which may result in command injection if the library is used to escape user input destined for use as command line arguments.
The following characters are not escaped properly: >,;,{,}
Bash has a neat but not well known feature known as "Bash Brace Expansion", wherein a sub-command can be executed without spaces by running it between a set of {} and using the , instead of to seperate arguments. Because of this, full command injection is possible even though it was initially thought to be impossible.
const quote = require('shell-quote').quote;
console.log(quote(['a;{echo,test,123,234}']));
// Actual "a;{echo,test,123,234}"
// Expected "a\;\{echo,test,123,234\}"
// Functional Equivalent "a; echo 'test' '123' '1234'"
Update to version 1.6.1 or later.
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in a Command in Shell-quote
The shell-quote package before 1.7.3 for Node.js allows command injection. An attacker can inject unescaped shell metacharacters through a regex designed to support Windows drive letters. If the output of this package is passed to a real shell as a quoted argument to a command with exec(), an attacker can inject arbitrary commands. This is because the Windows drive letter regex character class is [A-z] instead of the correct [A-Za-z]. Several shell metacharacters exist in the space between capital letter Z and lower case letter a, such as the backtick character.