Webpack 4.4.0 introduces several notable updates compared to version 4.3.0, primarily affecting the developer experience and tooling integrations. A key change is the updated eslint version, moving from 4.3.0 to 4.19.1, offering enhanced JavaScript linting capabilities and support for newer ECMAScript features. Similarly, prettier, a code formatting tool, is bumped from 1.8.2 to 1.11.1, providing improved code style enforcement and consistency.
Further refinements include an update to eslint-plugin-node, progressing from version 5.1.1 to 6.0.1, improving Node.js-specific linting rules. These updates collectively empower developers with more robust tools for code quality, maintainability, and stylistic consistency.
Another noteworthy change lies in the eslint-config-prettier and eslint-plugin-prettier, ensuring seamless integration between ESLint and Prettier for consistent and well-formatted code. The update to eslint-config-prettier from 2.3.1 to 2.9.0 and eslint-plugin-prettier from 2.3.1 to 2.6.0 further streamlining the process of code quality. The release date, March 29, 2018 offers newer solutions compared to the release date of version 4.3.0, March 27, 2018. While the core functionalities of Webpack remain largely unchanged, these dependency updates showcase a commitment to keeping up with the evolving JavaScript ecosystem and providing developers with a modern and efficient build tooling experience. The small difference in unpackedSize (1104753 vs 1102779) reflects these internal improvements and dependency updates.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.4.0 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.
