How to Fix Zalgo Issue (Spamming Console) with Colors.js 1.4.1/1.4.2

Cyrus Kao11 Jan 2022

Last modified on 24 Apr 2023 @ 05:36:27.

Colors.js, the open source Javascript package used by 4.3 million repositories has recently been corrupted by its owner Marak. Causing the library spamming console with a bunch of garbled characters.

Ironically, the original usage of this package was to make the console more readable by adding colors and styles. Now it's doing the complete opposite.

Fix Security Vulnerability

To fix this problem is quite simple, just pin the version of Colors.js to unaffected 1.4.0:

"dependencies": {
	...
	"colors": "1.4.0",
	...
}
JSON

Migrate to Chalk

Alternatively, you should consider migrating your project to more reliable packages like Chalk, which is another Node.js library focused on terminal styling. And with quite a similar API as well:

Colors.js

import colors from 'colors';

console.log(colors.green('This is green'));
Javascript

Chalk

import chalk from 'chalk';

console.log(chalk.green('This is green too'));
Javascript

To install Chalk from npm:

$ npm install chalk

Notes

As of 11 Jan 2022, Colors.js has reverted versions 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 to 1.4.0 on npm:

Check your installed Colors.js version:

$ npm ls colors

└── colors@1.4.0
Output

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