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GHSA-968p-4wvh-cqc8
No affected components available
Impact
When using Babel to compile regular expression named capturing groups, Babel will generate a polyfill for the .replace method that has quadratic complexity on some specific replacement pattern strings (i.e. the second argument passed to .replace).
Your generated code is vulnerable if all the following conditions are true:
- You use Babel to compile regular expression named capturing groups
- You use the
.replacemethod on a regular expression that contains named capturing groups - Your code uses untrusted strings as the second argument of
.replace
If you are using @babel/preset-env with the targets option, the transform that injects the vulnerable code is automatically enabled if:
- you use duplicated named capturing groups, and target any browser older than Chrome/Edge 126, Opera 112, Firefox 129, Safari 17.4, or Node.js 23
- you use any named capturing groups, and target any browser older than Chrome 64, Opera 71, Edge 79, Firefox 78, Safari 11.1, or Node.js 10
You can verify what transforms @babel/preset-env is using by enabling the debug option.
Patches
This problem has been fixed in @babel/helpers and @babel/runtime 7.26.10 and 8.0.0-alpha.17, please upgrade. It's likely that you do not directly depend on @babel/helpers, and instead you depend on @babel/core (which itself depends on @babel/helpers). Upgrading to @babel/core 7.26.10 is not required, but it guarantees that you are on a new enough @babel/helpers version.
Please note that just updating your Babel dependencies is not enough: you will also need to re-compile your code.
Workarounds
If you are passing user-provided strings as the second argument of .replace on regular expressions that contain named capturing groups, validate the input and make sure it does not contain the substring $< if it's then not followed by > (possibly with other characters in between).
References
This vulnerability was reported and fixed in https://github.com/babel/babel/pull/17173.
The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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