Tech Pulse Daily - November 5, 2025
Dillip Chowdary
Tech Entrepreneur & Innovator
November 5, 2025 | 8 min read
Today's Developer Highlights
- CRITICAL: React Native npm package vulnerability (CVE-2025-11953) with CVSS 9.8 affects 2M weekly downloads
- TypeScript overtakes Python and JavaScript to become #1 language on GitHub
- Node.js 25.1.0 released with V8 14.1 upgrade and major JSON.stringify performance improvements
- Python 3.14.0 brings free-threaded execution and experimental JIT compiler
- Two Windows zero-days (CVE-2025-24990, CVE-2025-59230) exploited in wild, CISA patches required
🚨 CRITICAL: React Native NPM Vulnerability Puts 2 Million Weekly Downloads at Risk
JFrog Security Research team disclosed CVE-2025-11953, a critical vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.8 affecting the @react-native-community/cli NPM package. With approximately 2 million weekly downloads, this vulnerability allows remote unauthenticated attackers to trigger arbitrary OS command execution on machines running the React Native development server.
The vulnerability exploits the Metro development server's /open-url endpoint, which handles POST requests containing user input that is unsafely passed to the open() function from the open NPM package. This design flaw enables OS command execution across Windows, macOS, and Linux environments. The attack vector is particularly dangerous as it requires no authentication and can be exploited remotely, posing a significant risk to React Native developers worldwide.
Immediate Action Required: Developers must update @react-native-community/cli-server-api to version 20.0.0 or higher in each of their projects. As of November 5, there are no confirmed public reports of CVE-2025-11953 being exploited in the wild, but the severity and ease of exploitation make immediate patching critical. The Singapore Cyber Security Agency has also issued an alert regarding this vulnerability.
TypeScript Overtakes Python and JavaScript as Most Used Language on GitHub
In a historic shift, TypeScript surpassed both Python and JavaScript in August 2025 to become the most used programming language on GitHub, marking the most significant language ranking change in over a decade. The GitHub Octoverse report reveals that a new developer joins GitHub every second, with the platform gaining 36 million new developers in 2025 alone.
The ascent of TypeScript has been driven by widespread adoption across major frameworks. Next.js 15, Astro 3, SvelteKit 2, Angular 18, and Remix now generate TypeScript codebases by default, making it the de facto choice for modern web development. This ecosystem-wide shift reflects developers' growing preference for type safety and enhanced tooling support that TypeScript provides over vanilla JavaScript.
India contributed significantly to GitHub's growth, adding more than 5.2 million developers in 2025—accounting for over 14% of the platform's total new developers. This makes India the single largest source of new developers on GitHub this year. GitHub Universe 2025 also introduced Agent HQ, an open ecosystem that unites multiple AI agents on a single platform with unified mission control for assignment, governance, and tracking.
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Node.js 25.1.0 Released with V8 14.1 and Major Performance Improvements
Node.js released version 25.1.0 on October 28, 2025, bringing significant performance enhancements and new capabilities. The update upgrades the V8 JavaScript engine to version 14.1, delivering major JSON.stringify performance improvements that benefit all Node.js applications handling JSON serialization.
Key improvements include built-in Uint8Array base64 and hexadecimal conversion methods, eliminating the need for external libraries in many cases. The release also includes ongoing optimizations to the WebAssembly and JIT compilation pipelines, resulting in faster execution times for computationally intensive applications. These enhancements make Node.js 25.1.0 particularly attractive for microservices architectures and API-heavy applications.
Node.js 25.0.0 was initially released on October 15, 2025, with version 25.1.0 following as a maintenance update. Developers are encouraged to test their applications against Node.js 25.x in development environments before upgrading production systems. The Node.js team continues to support multiple release lines, with Long-Term Support (LTS) versions receiving security patches and critical bug fixes.
Python 3.14.0 Launches with Free-Threaded Execution and Experimental JIT
Python 3.14.0 was officially released on October 7, 2025, introducing groundbreaking features that fundamentally change Python's execution model. PEP 779 brings free-threaded Python, allowing true parallelism without the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) constraints that have historically limited Python's multi-threading capabilities. This change enables CPU-bound Python applications to utilize multiple cores effectively.
The release includes an experimental Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler in official macOS and Windows binaries, offering potential performance improvements for computationally intensive code. Additional major features include PEP 649 for deferred evaluation of annotations, PEP 750 introducing template string literals (t-strings) for safer string interpolation, and PEP 734 enabling multiple interpreters in the standard library.
Python 3.14 also marks the first release with official Android binary releases, expanding Python's reach to mobile development. The free-threaded implementation is particularly significant for data science, machine learning, and web scraping applications that previously relied on multiprocessing workarounds. Developers should test the JIT compiler with their workloads to measure real-world performance gains, as results vary significantly based on code patterns.
npm Implements Major Security Changes: Token Expiration and Legacy Token Revocation
GitHub announced significant security improvements for npm, with changes rolling out throughout October and completing by mid-November 2025. All new granular tokens will now expire after 7 days by default, with a maximum lifetime of 90 days. This change aims to reduce the security risk from compromised tokens by limiting their validity period.
More significantly, all legacy classic tokens are being systematically revoked over a five-week period. Developers relying on classic tokens for CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, or package publishing must migrate to the new granular token system immediately. The new token system provides fine-grained permissions, allowing developers to create tokens with specific scopes rather than full account access.
Action Required: Review your npm automation workflows and migrate to granular tokens before mid-November. Update CI/CD configurations, deployment scripts, and local development tools to use the new token format. GitHub provides migration guides and tools to help developers identify and replace legacy tokens across their repositories and build systems.
CISA Flags Two Windows Zero-Days Being Exploited in the Wild
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added two Windows vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, with federal agencies required to apply patches by November 4, 2025. CVE-2025-24990 is a Windows Agere Modem Driver elevation of privilege vulnerability affecting every version of Windows ever shipped. Rather than patching the vulnerability, Microsoft opted to remove the obsolete driver entirely due to its extensive security exposure.
CVE-2025-59230 is an improper access control flaw in Windows Remote Access Connection Manager that allows authenticated attackers to escalate privileges locally and gain SYSTEM-level access. Both vulnerabilities enable privilege escalation attacks that could allow threat actors to bypass endpoint protection systems and move laterally across enterprise networks.
Microsoft's October 2025 Patch Tuesday addressed a total of 193 vulnerabilities, including nine critical and 123 important-severity issues. Six zero-day vulnerabilities were patched, with four being actively exploited in the wild and two publicly disclosed. The scale of this patch release underscores the ongoing security challenges facing Windows environments and the importance of timely patch management for development and production systems.
Apple M5 Chip Delivers 4x GPU Performance Boost for AI Workloads
Apple unveiled the M5 chip on October 15, 2025, featuring a next-generation 10-core GPU with Neural Accelerator in each core. The chip delivers over 4x peak GPU compute compared to the M4, specifically optimized for AI-driven workflows including diffusion models and large language models. This performance leap enables developers to run more complex AI models directly on local hardware.
Geekbench AI GPU testing revealed the M5 quantized score of 23,628 compared to the M4's 11,616—nearly twice as fast. In real-world Stable Diffusion testing, the M5 nearly doubled image generation performance compared to the M4. The third-generation ray-tracing engine provides up to 45% graphics uplift in applications utilizing ray tracing, benefiting game developers and 3D rendering workflows.
The M5 includes 153GB/s unified memory bandwidth—a nearly 30% increase over M4—and supports up to 32GB of unified memory. Manufactured using TSMC's modern N3P process (3nm), the chip delivers up to 30% faster graphics performance than M4 and 2.5x faster than the original M1. For developers working on machine learning models, computer vision applications, or AI-powered tools, the M5 represents a significant advancement in on-device AI processing capabilities.