Webpack version 4.40.3 introduces subtle enhancements over its predecessor, version 4.40.2, while maintaining a consistent core functionality as a powerful module bundler for modern JavaScript applications. Both versions cater to the needs of developers seeking to optimize and streamline their web development workflows. The primary purpose remains unchanged: efficiently packaging CommonJs and AMD modules for browser deployment, enabling code splitting into manageable bundles for on-demand loading, and supporting a wide array of loaders for preprocessing various file types such as JSON, JSX, ES7, CSS, and LESS.
Examining the dependency lists, both versions share identical dependencies, including crucial libraries like ajv for JSON schema validation, acorn for JavaScript parsing, and webpack-sources for manipulating source code. Similarly, the development dependencies, encompassing testing frameworks like jest, linting tools such as eslint, and loaders for diverse file formats, remain consistent. This suggests that the update from 4.40.2 to 4.40.3 likely involves minor bug fixes, performance improvements, or internal refactoring rather than significant feature additions or API changes.
Looking at the 'dist' property, we can see that unpackedSize increased a little, suggesting some small changes related with the code base.
For developers, this implies a smooth transition when upgrading. The core functionalities and configuration options they rely on should remain intact, ensuring minimal disruption to existing projects. Developers should conduct standard testing procedures to verify the update's compatibility with their specific codebase and configurations.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.40.3 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.
