Strange behavior in MacOS

[davidjpfeiffer]

I have used this http server for years and never had any issues at all. All the sudden I went to install http-server on my new mac and I am unable to host a simple static HTML file. I am able to install the http-server package using NPM but then when I try to host a web server I see this strange behavior in terminal:

Environment Versions

1. MacOS Monterey: 12.1
2. Node version: 16.13.1
3. NPM version: 8.1.2
4. http-server version: 14.0.0

Steps to reproduce

1. npm i http-server
2. npx http-server

Expected result

The web server gets hosted and the Terminal window shows network log info as usual

Actual result

The web server is not hosted and instead the terminal window spams endless unrecognizable characters as seen in the screenshot

Other information

I have tried using multiple different versions of the http-server package including versions 13.0.0 and much older versions but the behavior is the same. I tried using sudo when installing the http-server package but that did not change anything. I also tried giving my Terminal Full Disk Access and access to the Developer Tools but nothing I have tried changes the behavior.

[davidjpfeiffer]

Just in case this is helpful information, I am able to download the Angular CLI using NPM and then create a new Angular project and host it on a local web server no problem on this same computer.

[BitesizedLion]

This issue is due to the NPM module "colors", it's author went rogue and added an infinite for loop because he thought it would be funny, can be solved by pinning to version 1.4.0

http-server/package.json

Line 89 in 72b6b07

"colors": "^1.4.0",

[davidjpfeiffer]

@BitesizedLion thank you so much for responding, it was driving me crazy trying to figure out what was going on

[davidjpfeiffer]

Here is a news story about the incident https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dev-corrupts-npm-libs-colors-and-faker-breaking-thousands-of-apps/

[davidjpfeiffer]

If anyone else is impacted by this you can consider using https://www.npmjs.com/package/serve as an alternative

[mattdaviscodes]

Same problem.

EDIT: And pinning to that version doesn't help.

[thornjad]

This is fixed in http-server v14.1.0 and backported to v13.1.0. It was indeed caused by Marak/colors.js#285, and we fixed it by switching out colors.js for chalk.