Webpack 4.12.0 introduces several updates and refinements compared to its predecessor, version 4.11.1, making it a worthwhile upgrade for developers. A key dependency update involves acorn, which jumps from version 5.0.0 to 5.6.2. This upgrade likely brings enhanced JavaScript parsing capabilities and support for newer syntax features. Another notable change is the chrome-trace-event dependency, moving from version 0.1.1 to 1.0.0. This signifies improvements in performance tracing and debugging functionalities within Webpack builds.
Furthermore, the @webassemblyjs family of packages (@webassemblyjs/ast, @webassemblyjs/wasm-opt, @webassemblyjs/wasm-edit, @webassemblyjs/wasm-parser, @webassemblyjs/helper-module-context) sees updates from version 1.5.10 to 1.5.12. This suggests improvements and bug fixes related to WebAssembly support, crucial for developers leveraging WebAssembly modules in their projects. While most devDependencies remain consistent, these dependency updates in 4.12.0 contribute to a more robust and efficient module bundling experience, particularly beneficial for projects employing modern JavaScript features and WebAssembly. Upgrading would ensure access to the refined functionalities and potential performance gains baked into these updated dependencies. Despite a similar file count (320), the unpacked size increases slightly from 1,198,562 to 1,201,424, indicating the new features and updates add a small amount of additional code to the library.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.12.0 of the package
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.
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)
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.
Cross-Site Scripting in serialize-javascript
Versions of serialize-javascript prior to 2.1.1 are vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). The package fails to sanitize serialized regular expressions. This vulnerability does not affect Node.js applications.
Upgrade to version 2.1.1 or later.
Insecure serialization leading to RCE in serialize-javascript
serialize-javascript prior to 3.1.0 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary code via the function "deleteFunctions" within "index.js".
An object such as {"foo": /1"/, "bar": "a\"@__R-<UID>-0__@"} was serialized as {"foo": /1"/, "bar": "a\/1"/}, which allows an attacker to escape the bar key. This requires the attacker to control the values of both foo and bar and guess the value of <UID>. The UID has a keyspace of approximately 4 billion making it a realistic network attack.
