Webpack version 4.9.0 represents a minor update over the previous stable release, version 4.8.3, offering developers incremental improvements and refinements to this popular module bundler. The core functionality remains consistent, ensuring existing configurations and workflows should largely remain unaffected.
A key difference lies within the updated development dependencies. In version 4.9.0, the jest testing framework has been updated from version 23.0.0-alpha.5 to 23.0.0-charlie.3. Also, the typescript has been updated newer version 2.9.0-dev.20180518 than 2.9.0-dev.20180511 from the previous release. This indicates a focus on improving testing stability and leveraging newer TypeScript features. While this particularly impacts developers contributing to the webpack project itself, it indirectly benefits all users through a more robust and well-tested codebase. A developer using webpack should focus on update their test and can benefit of the new typescript features. In terms of file size, webpack 4.9.0 has a slightly larger unpacked size, at 1198659 bytes versus 1191789 in the previous version, which is a small difference. The upgrade of the packages can have impact on performance so it's suggested for the developers to test the new version before deploying to production environment.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 4.9.0 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.
