Semantic-release version 12.4.0 is a minor update to the popular automated package publishing tool, building upon the functionalities offered in version 12.3.0. Both versions retain the core purpose of automating semver-compliant releases, freeing developers from manual versioning and publishing processes. They share the same fundamental dependencies, including essential libraries such as chalk for terminal styling, debug for debugging, execa for executing commands, and @semantic-release/* plugins for specialized tasks like npm package management, error handling, GitHub integration, commit analysis, and release notes generation. In essence, the core functionalities and plugin capabilities remains consistent between the two versions.
However, the key distinction lies in the releaseDate, indicating a more recent build for version 12.4.0. While the absence of explicitly listed changes suggests a potential focus on bug fixes, performance improvements, or dependency updates within existing functionalities, developers should consider upgrading to the latest minor version to benefit from these potential enhancements and maintain compatibility with the latest ecosystem standards and security patches. While the risk may be low, staying up-to-date is important to guarantee a stable and reliable automated publishing pipeline which allows developers to focus on writing code rather than managing releases.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 12.4.0 of the package
Secret disclosure when containing characters that become URI encoded
Secrets that would normally be masked by semantic-release can be accidentally disclosed if they contain characters that become encoded when included in a URL.
Fixed in v17.2.3
Secrets that do not contain characters that become encoded when included in a URL are already masked properly.
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in cross-spawn
Versions of the package cross-spawn before 7.0.5 are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) due to improper input sanitization. An attacker can increase the CPU usage and crash the program by crafting a very large and well crafted string.
Marked ReDoS due to email addresses being evaluated in quadratic time
Versions of marked from 0.3.14 until 0.6.2 are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service. Email addresses may be evaluated in quadratic time, allowing attackers to potentially crash the node process due to resource exhaustion.
Upgrade to version 0.6.2 or later.
Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in marked
What kind of vulnerability is it?
Denial of service.
The regular expression inline.reflinkSearch may cause catastrophic backtracking against some strings.
PoC is the following.
import * as marked from 'marked';
console.log(marked.parse(`[x]: x
\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](\\[\\](`));
Who is impacted?
Anyone who runs untrusted markdown through marked and does not use a worker with a time limit.
Has the problem been patched?
Yes
What versions should users upgrade to?
4.0.10
Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?
Do not run untrusted markdown through marked or run marked on a worker thread and set a reasonable time limit to prevent draining resources.
Are there any links users can visit to find out more?
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in marked
What kind of vulnerability is it?
Denial of service.
The regular expression block.def may cause catastrophic backtracking against some strings.
PoC is the following.
import * as marked from "marked";
marked.parse(`[x]:${' '.repeat(1500)}x ${' '.repeat(1500)} x`);
Who is impacted?
Anyone who runs untrusted markdown through marked and does not use a worker with a time limit.
Has the problem been patched?
Yes
What versions should users upgrade to?
4.0.10
Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?
Do not run untrusted markdown through marked or run marked on a worker thread and set a reasonable time limit to prevent draining resources.
Are there any links users can visit to find out more?
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS)
npm ssri 5.2.2-6.0.1 and 7.0.0-8.0.0, processes SRIs using a regular expression which is vulnerable to a denial of service. Malicious SRIs could take an extremely long time to process, leading to denial of service. This issue only affects consumers using the strict option.
Server-Side Request Forgery in Request
The request package through 2.88.2 for Node.js and the @cypress/request package prior to 3.0.0 allow a bypass of SSRF mitigations via an attacker-controller server that does a cross-protocol redirect (HTTP to HTTPS, or HTTPS to HTTP).
NOTE: The request package is no longer supported by the maintainer.
form-data uses unsafe random function in form-data for choosing boundary
form-data uses Math.random() to select a boundary value for multipart form-encoded data. This can lead to a security issue if an attacker:
Because the values of Math.random() are pseudo-random and predictable (see: https://blog.securityevaluators.com/hacking-the-javascript-lottery-80cc437e3b7f), an attacker who can observe a few sequential values can determine the state of the PRNG and predict future values, includes those used to generate form-data's boundary value. The allows the attacker to craft a value that contains a boundary value, allowing them to inject additional parameters into the request.
This is largely the same vulnerability as was recently found in undici by parrot409 -- I'm not affiliated with that researcher but want to give credit where credit is due! My PoC is largely based on their work.
The culprit is this line here: https://github.com/form-data/form-data/blob/426ba9ac440f95d1998dac9a5cd8d738043b048f/lib/form_data.js#L347
An attacker who is able to predict the output of Math.random() can predict this boundary value, and craft a payload that contains the boundary value, followed by another, fully attacker-controlled field. This is roughly equivalent to any sort of improper escaping vulnerability, with the caveat that the attacker must find a way to observe other Math.random() values generated by the application to solve for the state of the PRNG. However, Math.random() is used in all sorts of places that might be visible to an attacker (including by form-data itself, if the attacker can arrange for the vulnerable application to make a request to an attacker-controlled server using form-data, such as a user-controlled webhook -- the attacker could observe the boundary values from those requests to observe the Math.random() outputs). A common example would be a x-request-id header added by the server. These sorts of headers are often used for distributed tracing, to correlate errors across the frontend and backend. Math.random() is a fine place to get these sorts of IDs (in fact, opentelemetry uses Math.random for this purpose)
PoC here: https://github.com/benweissmann/CVE-2025-7783-poc
Instructions are in that repo. It's based on the PoC from https://hackerone.com/reports/2913312 but simplified somewhat; the vulnerable application has a more direct side-channel from which to observe Math.random() values (a separate endpoint that happens to include a randomly-generated request ID).
For an application to be vulnerable, it must:
form-data to send data including user-controlled data to some other system. The attacker must be able to do something malicious by adding extra parameters (that were not intended to be user-controlled) to this request. Depending on the target system's handling of repeated parameters, the attacker might be able to overwrite values in addition to appending values (some multipart form handlers deal with repeats by overwriting values instead of representing them as an array)If an application is vulnerable, this allows an attacker to make arbitrary requests to internal systems.
tough-cookie Prototype Pollution vulnerability
Versions of the package tough-cookie before 4.1.3 are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution due to improper handling of Cookies when using CookieJar in rejectPublicSuffixes=false mode. This issue arises from the manner in which the objects are initialized.
Hostname confusion in parse-url
Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor via hostname confusion in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-url prior to 6.0.1
Server-Side Request Forgery in parse-url
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-url prior to 7.0.0.
Cross site scripting in parse-url
Cross-site Scripting (XSS) - Stored in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-url prior to 7.0.0.
Cross site scripting in parse-url
Cross-site Scripting (XSS) - Generic in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-url prior to 6.0.1
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-url
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-url prior to 8.1.0.
parse-url parses http URLs incorrectly, making it vulnerable to host name spoofing
parse-url prior to 8.1.0 is vulnerable to Misinterpretation of Input. parse-url parses certain http or https URLs incorrectly, identifying the URL's protocol as ssh. It may also parse the host name incorrectly.
Authorization Bypass in parse-path
Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key in GitHub repository ionicabizau/parse-path prior to 5.0.0.