Browserify 6.2.0 is a minor update to the widely-used JavaScript bundler, succeeding version 6.1.2. Both versions maintain the core functionality of enabling Node.js-style require() statements in browser-side code, allowing developers to modularize their front-end applications and leverage the vast ecosystem of npm packages. The package description remains consistent: "browser-side require() the node way," emphasizing this core feature.
A detailed comparison reveals that the dependency lists for both versions are nearly identical. Core dependencies like umd, url, glob, module-deps, and browser-resolve are pinned to the same versions, indicating a focus on stability and compatibility. Similarly, the development dependencies that the browserify's developers used to test the library, including seq, tap, and es6ify, remain unchanged, suggesting that there were no fundamental changes to the build or testing process.
The most significant difference lies in the very slight delay between the releases of the 2 versions. The time between v6.1.2 and v6.2.0 is just a little over 1 hour indicating a patch with bug fixes or very minor functionality. This means is likely not important the changes in the upgrade for developers that want to use the library.
Developers can generally upgrade from 6.1.2 to 6.2.0 with confidence, expecting minimal disruption. The changes in this update are so minor that it will probably be an automatic upgrade in a package manager. Given the stability focus reflected in unchanged dependency versions, the release is likely to address minor bugs or performance tweaks rather than introducing major new features.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 6.2.0 of the package
Regular Expression Denial of Service in uglify-js
Versions of uglify-js prior to 2.6.0 are affected by a regular expression denial of service vulnerability when malicious inputs are passed into the parse() method.
var u = require('uglify-js');
var genstr = function (len, chr) {
var result = "";
for (i=0; i<=len; i++) {
result = result + chr;
}
return result;
}
u.parse("var a = " + genstr(process.argv[2], "1") + ".1ee7;");
$ time node test.js 10000
real 0m1.091s
user 0m1.047s
sys 0m0.039s
$ time node test.js 80000
real 0m6.486s
user 0m6.229s
sys 0m0.094s
Update to version 2.6.0 or later.
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.