Webpack version 4.12.1 is a minor release following 4.12.0 in the popular JavaScript module bundler. Both versions share the same core purpose: efficiently packaging CommonJs and AMD modules for browser deployment, enabling code splitting for on-demand loading and supporting loaders for diverse file types like JSON, JSX, CSS, and more. Dependency-wise, the core dependencies remain unchanged between these versions, ensuring consistent functionality for key modules like ajv, acorn, tapable, webpack-sources and @webassemblyjs suite, among other critical components.
Examining the devDependencies reveals subtle yet important changes. While most development dependencies such as glob, jest, less, react, eslint, lodash, and rimraf hold steady, a key update is observed in prettier, which bumps from version 1.13.2 to 1.13.5 in version 4.12.1, suggesting potential formatting or style improvements. Another notable change is the update of typescript from version 2.9.0-dev.20180518 to 2.9.1 in the newer release, which brings new features and bug fixes or improvements of the language to the toolkit. The unpacked size increased slightly, from 1201424 to 1207073. Finally, if you are dealing with the library, remember to check the changelog for complete and detailed information.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.12.1 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.
