Webpack experienced a minor version update from 4.15.1 to 4.16.0 in July 2018. Both versions fundamentally serve the same purpose: bundling JavaScript and other assets for browser deployment. The core functionality remains consistent – facilitating modular codebase splits and enabling pre-processing of files via loaders for various formats like JSON, JSX, and CSS. Developers can still leverage loaders to handle custom file types. The listed dependencies are largely the same, indicating no drastic architectural shifts.
A notable difference appears in the jest dev dependency, upgraded from version 23.0.1 to 23.3.0. This suggests improvements or bug fixes in the testing framework used during webpack's development. Developers using older webpack versions encountering Jest related issues might find relief in the newer webpack release. Additionally, the increased fileCount and unpackedSize in version 4.16.0's dist object may indicate new features, refined code, or optimized assets that contribute to a slightly larger package size.
The releaseDate confirms the newer version provides the advantage of incorporating the latest updates and possibly addressing identified bugs or security vulnerabilities from the previous release. Therefore opting for Webpack 4.16.0 seems preferable for most new projects unless you encounter specific regressions or compatibility issues.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.16.0 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.
