Webpack 4.14.0 arrived hot on the heels of 4.13.0, offering subtle refinements rather than a sweeping overhaul. For developers already using Webpack 4, the upgrade should be relatively seamless. A key area to examine is the dist object, revealing a slight increase in unpacked size from 1213567 to 1217641, suggesting minor additions or adjustments within the codebase. While the dependency lists appear identical at first glance, careful review is recommended to ensure compatibility with your existing project setup, particularly if you're relying on specific versions of dependencies like ajv, acorn, or webpack-sources.
The release date difference, just over a day, points to a focused effort on bug fixes or minor feature enhancements identified shortly after the 4.13.0 release. Staying current with such incremental updates allows developers to benefit from the latest performance tweaks and stability improvements, ensuring a smoother build process and potentially resolving any edge-case issues encountered in the previous version. Webpack, known for its powerful module bundling capabilities, remains a cornerstone for modern web development. Keeping abreast of these minor version bumps is vital for maximizing its effectiveness in optimizing application delivery and performance. This upgrade promises stability and the incremental improvements should be weighted against the risk of introducing a breaking change in your specific setting.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.14.0 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.
