Webpack 4.32.2 is a minor release following version 4.32.1 in the popular webpack 4 series, a robust JavaScript bundler used for modern web development. Both versions share the same core functionality, providing tools to bundle CommonJs, AMD modules, and more, optimize code for browsers. They facilitate code splitting, on-demand loading, and utilize loaders for preprocessing various file types like JSON, JSX, ES7, CSS, and LESS. Key dependencies remain consistent between the versions, including ajv for JSON schema validation, acorn for JavaScript parsing, tapable for plugin infrastructure, and webpack-sources for source code manipulation.
The devDependencies also show a similar array of useful tools for the package maintainers and contributors.
While the feature set remains largely the same, the key difference lies in the internal fixes and optimizations. The size of the unpacked archive has slightly vary which might mean changes related to compression and file size.
For developers, upgrading from 4.32.1 to 4.32.2 should be a seamless process, assuming no direct reliance on internal workings that might have been tweaked. Webpack users should always look at the changelog to understand potential impact when upgrading. The release date of 4.32.2 is a single day after the one of version 4.32.1, that can suggest a fix for a critical bug and this version is worth consideration to upgrade.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.32.2 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.
