CVE-2024-22423 Information

Description

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes. The patch that addressed CVE-2023-40581 attempted to prevent RCE when using --exec with %q by replacing double quotes with two double quotes. However this escaping is not sufficient and still allows expansion of environment variables. Support for output template expansion in --exec along with this vulnerable behavior was added to yt-dlp in version 2021.04.11. yt-dlp version 2024.04.09 fixes this issue by properly escaping %. It replaces them with %%cd:~% a variable that expands to nothing leaving only the leading percent. It is recommended to upgrade yt-dlp to version 2024.04.09 as soon as possible. Also always be careful when using --exec because while this specific vulnerability has been patched using unvalidated input in shell commands is inherently dangerous. For Windows users who are not able to upgrade avoid using any output template expansion in --exec other than `` (filepath); if expansion in --exec is needed verify the fields you are using do not contain \ | or &; and/or instead of using --exec write the info json and load the fields from it instead.

Reference

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-hjq6-52gw-2g7p https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-42h4-v29r-42qg https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/de015e930747165dbb8fcd360f8775fd973b7d6e https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/ff07792676f404ffff6ee61b5638c9dc1a33a37a https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2021.04.11 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2024.04.09