Sass version 1.15.0 represents an incremental update over its immediate predecessor, version 1.14.3, within the Dart Sass project, a pure JavaScript implementation of the widely used CSS preprocessor. Both versions maintain the core functionality of Sass, offering developers the ability to write more maintainable and efficient CSS through features like variables, nesting, mixins, and functions. Crucially, both versions declare a dependency on chokidar version 2.0.0 or higher, indicating continued reliance on a robust file system watcher for features like automatic Sass compilation upon file changes, a staple in many development workflows.
The primary difference between the two versions lies in their release date and unpacked size within the distributed package. Version 1.15.0 was released on November 14, 2018, whereas 1.14.3 was released on October 18, 2018, marking roughly a month between releases. The unpacked size of 1.15.0 is slightly larger at 715511 bytes compared to 1.14.3's 712424 bytes, suggesting minor additions, bug fixes, or optimizations within the core library. While both versions contain 4 files, the increased size could reflect updated dependencies or refined internal algorithms. For developers, this suggests an upgrade to 1.15.0 might offer incremental improvements, potentially boosting performance or addressing subtle bugs, while maintaining API and dependency compatibility. Given the focused approach to maintainability via a CSS preprocessor, Sass provides a valuable tool for web developers, and staying up to date may improve experience in the long run.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.15.0 of the package
Uncontrolled resource consumption in braces
The NPM package braces fails to limit the number of characters it can handle, which could lead to Memory Exhaustion. In lib/parse.js, if a malicious user sends "imbalanced braces" as input, the parsing will enter a loop, which will cause the program to start allocating heap memory without freeing it at any moment of the loop. Eventually, the JavaScript heap limit is reached, and the program will crash.
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in micromatch
The NPM package micromatch prior to version 4.0.8 is vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS). The vulnerability occurs in micromatch.braces() in index.js because the pattern .* will greedily match anything. By passing a malicious payload, the pattern matching will keep backtracking to the input while it doesn't find the closing bracket. As the input size increases, the consumption time will also increase until it causes the application to hang or slow down. There was a merged fix but further testing shows the issue persisted prior to https://github.com/micromatch/micromatch/pull/266. This issue should be mitigated by using a safe pattern that won't start backtracking the regular expression due to greedy matching.
