CVE-2023-40581 — yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes. yt-dlp allows the user to provide shell command lines to be executed at various stages in its download steps through the `--exec` flag. This flag allows output template expansion in its argument, so that metadata val

01What is this vulnerability?

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes. yt-dlp allows the user to provide shell command lines to be executed at various stages in its download steps through the `--exec` flag. This flag allows output template expansion in its argument, so that metadata values may be used in the shell commands. The metadata fields can be combined with the `%q` conversion, which is intended…

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
yt-dlp	yt	dlp — >= 2021.04.11, < 2023.09.24, < nightly 2023.09.24.003044

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Open the Sigma generator with a pre-filled prompt for this CVE to draft a starting detection in your stack of choice:

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07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-09-25T18:54:00.204Z
• Last modified: 2024-09-24T14:48:55.952Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-42h4-v29r-42qg
• github.com — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/de015e930747165dbb8fcd360f8775fd973b7d6e
• github.com — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases/tag/2023.09.24.003044
• github.com — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2021.04.11
• github.com — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2023.09.24