Http-cache-semantics is a valuable npm package designed to empower developers in building robust HTTP caches and proxies. It excels at parsing Cache-Control and other related headers, ensuring adherence to HTTP caching specifications. Examining versions 3.8.1 and 3.8.0 reveals subtle yet important changes beneficial to developers.
Both versions share the same core functionality and maintain identical descriptions, licenses (BSD-2-Clause), and repository information. The author remains Kornel Lesiński, underscoring consistent maintainership. Key differences lie in the devDependencies section and the release date. Version 3.8.1 updates babel-preset-env from version 1.5.2 to 1.6.1. This indicates improvements and bug fixes in the Babel preset environment, which transpiles modern JavaScript code for broader browser compatibility. This dependency update is crucial for developers leveraging newer JavaScript features, ensuring that the cached HTTP responses are compatible across various environments. Additionally, the releaseDate shows version 3.8.1 was released on December 1, 2017, after version 3.8.0 released on October 12, 2017, suggesting that version 3.8.1 includes improvements or bug fixes made after the 3.8.0 release. For developers aiming to optimize caching strategies and maximize compatibility with modern JavaScript, upgrading to version 3.8.1 is recommended due to its updated Babel preset and potential bug fixes.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 3.8.1 of the package
http-cache-semantics vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service
http-cache semantics contains an Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity , leading to Denial of Service. This affects versions of the package http-cache-semantics before 4.1.1. The issue can be exploited via malicious request header values sent to a server, when that server reads the cache policy from the request using this library.