Fixing npm vulnerabilities

Question

I am following a TypeScript tutorial.
Unfortunately, the packages are outdated and I got a warning about vulnerabilities.

I followed a bunch of suggestions from npm check and update package if needed, namely:

• npm audit fix
• npm audit fix --force
• npm update

npm audit says there are still 24 vulnerabilities left.
But none of the above commands will fix them.

npm outdated results in no output.

The vulnerable packages are :

ansi-regex
glob-parent
node-forge
nth-check
postcss

I don't actually know why they are part of my project. I don't have them in my package.json.

What are the next steps for fixing these vulnerabilities?

Below is what I have tried.

• How to fix npm vulnerabilities? which has no answers.
• Manually updating the dependencies in package.json to newer versions and then running npm install. It didn't have an effect.
• Deleting package-lock.json as suggested here and then running npm install again.
• Adding "ansi-regex": "^6.0.1", "glob-parent": "^6.0.2", "node-forge": "^1.3.0", "nth-check": "^2.0.1", "postcss": "^8.4.12" as devDependencies and running npm install.
• Running npm i npm@latest as suggested in How to fix npm vulnerabilities.
• How to fix npm vulnerabilities? I tried two methods, problems persist
  which didn't have any new suggestions.
• I have 5 moderate severity vulnerabilities when I checked the npm audit
  which also didn't suggest any new commands.
• Running npm update glob-parent --depth 2 just to find out that --depth is deprecated and that npm always updates any depth [GitHub].
• Running npm prune.
• Deleting the node_modules folder and running npm install again.

You can reproduce my latest state with the following package.json in an empty directory and running npm install.

{
  "name": "pacman",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "I just follow a tutorial. Nothing of interest.",
  "keywords": ["game"],
  "license": "MIT",
  "author": "someone stupid",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "parcel build index.html",
    "dev": "parcel index.html --open",
    "start": "npm run build && npm run dev",
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^5.16.0",
    "@typescript-eslint/parser": "^5.16.0",
    "ansi-regex": "^6.0.1",
    "eslint": "^8.12.0",
    "eslint-config-prettier": "^8.5.0",
    "eslint-plugin-prettier": "^4.0.0",
    "glob-parent": "^6.0.2",
    "node-forge": "^1.3.0",
    "nth-check": "^2.0.1",
    "parcel": "^2.4.0",
    "parcel-bundler": "^1.12.5",
    "postcss": "^8.4.12",
    "prettier": "^2.6.1",
    "typescript": "^4.6.3"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "npm": "^8.5.5"
  }
}

This should give you 24 vulnerabilities, 18 moderate and 6 high, at the time of writing, running npm version 8.5.5.

Answer 1

As per the comments, I have already tried all commands for the general case, in which case you need to start analyzing individual packages.

So, what did I do?

1. Update all dependencies to the latest version.

Next, perform a binary search by removing half of the dependencies and repeating the following steps

2. delete the node_modules folder
3. run npm install
4. run npm audit to check for the vulnerabilities

If there are no vulnerabilites, add the half of the remaining packages you want to install.

If there are vulnerabilities, remove the half of the packages you are currently installing.

In my case, this process boiled it down to the following two lines:

"parcel": "^2.4.0",
"parcel-bundler": "^1.12.5",

For parcel-bundler, NPM spit out a warning:

npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Parcel v1 is no longer maintained. 
Please migrate to v2, which is published under the 'parcel' package.

So I guess I don't need parcel-bundler at all, because it has been integrated into the parcel package, which I had already updated to version 2 in an earlier step.

Answer 2

As noted in your self-answer, the parcel-bundler package is deprecated :

Parcel v1 is no longer maintained. Please migrate to v2, which is published under the 'parcel' package.

In fact, the npm package name has changed from parcel-bundler to parcel. Having them both in the same package.json means having two different versions of the exact same package twice, so the word deprecated is rather misleading in this case.

Reproducing your findings – can we trust the audit report?

Thanks for including the package.json in your question.
Doing so makes it possible to reproduce your findings.

1. I run npm install npm@latest -g, and then npm --version, which responds 10.2.3.

2. In an empty directory, I add a version of your package.json, then run npm install. ¹

package.json :

{
  "name": "soq-71635274-fix-npm",
  "license": "MIT",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin": "^5.16.0",
    "@typescript-eslint/parser": "^5.16.0",
    "eslint": "^8.12.0",
    "eslint-config-prettier": "^8.5.0",
    "eslint-plugin-prettier": "^4.0.0",
    "parcel": "^2.4.0",
    "parcel-bundler": "^1.12.5",
    "prettier": "^2.6.1",
    "typescript": "^4.6.3"
  }
}

3. To make sure I have the latest versions of all packages, I then run npx npm-check-updates, followed by npx npm-check-updates -u and npm install.
   The response says 59 vulnerabilities (47 moderate, 12 high),
   and suggests to "Run `npm audit` for details".

4. So next I run npm audit. Here is the beginning of the resulting npm audit security report.

# npm audit report
glob-parent  <5.1.2
Severity: high
…

5. Since parcel-bundler is obsolete, I remove it from package.json.
   But running npm install doesn't give a clean report.
   It still says 11 moderate severity vulnerabilities.

6. Running npm audit fix neither changes package.json nor package-lock.json.

7. Running npm audit fix --force once downgrades parcel in package.json from ^2.10.2 to ^1.12.4. The size of package-lock.json increases from 255 kB to 477 kB.

8. Running npm audit fix --force twice (a second time) re-upgrades parcel from ^1.12.4 back to ^2.10.2 in package.json.
   It decreases the size of package-lock.json from 477 kB to 184 kB. ²

This also results in found 0 vulnerabilities :

I find this remarkable.
Fixing all the vulnerabilities and running npm install is not enough to get a clean report.
You then also need to run npm audit fix --force twice. ³

References

• An answer explaining that parcel-bundler is deprecated
• The package parcel-bundler is deprecated
• How to migrate parcel-bundler
• How to create a Minimal, Reproducible Example
• Auditing package dependencies for security vulnerabilities
• npm audit security report

---

¹ Since you added the packages ansi-regex, glob-parent, node-forge, nth-check, and postcss as direct devDependencies, I decided to undo that by removing them from package.json.
I also removed the dependency on npm@^8.5.5, which I believe stems from you running npm i npm@latest which installs npm locally. By contrast, I always install npm only globally, npm i npm --global.

² The only difference in package-lock.json before running npm audit fix --force and after running it twice, is that a lot of packages have been removed. I'd assume that the ones removed are packages that parcel-bundler depends on. Thus, npm install alone does not remove these packages.

³ Running npm audit fix --force a third time does not change package.json or package-lock.json anymore.
It seems that once a state of "0 vulnerabilities" is reached, the command npm audit fix --force doesn't induce any more changes. This makes sense.

Answer 3

Try to update all your npm with this command. It helped me

npm install -g npm@latest