Upstream information

CVE-2023-40581 at MITRE

Description

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 to quote/escape these values so they can be safely passed to the shell. However, the escaping used for `cmd` (the shell used by Python's `subprocess` on Windows) does not properly escape special characters, which can allow for remote code execution if `--exec` is used directly with maliciously crafted remote data. This vulnerability only impacts `yt-dlp` on Windows, and the vulnerability is present regardless of whether `yt-dlp` is run from `cmd` or from `PowerShell`. 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 2023.09.24 fixes this issue by properly escaping each special character. `\n` will be replaced by `\r` as no way of escaping it has been found. It is recommended to upgrade yt-dlp to version 2023.09.24 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: 1. Avoid using any output template expansion in --exec other than {} (filepath). 2. If expansion in --exec is needed, verify the fields you are using do not contain ", | or &. 3. Instead of using --exec, write the info json and load the fields from it instead.

SUSE information

Overall state of this security issue: Does not affect SUSE products

This issue is currently rated as having important severity.

CVSS v3 Scores
  National Vulnerability Database
Base Score 8.3
Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity High
Privileges Required None
User Interaction Required
Scope Changed
Confidentiality Impact High
Integrity Impact High
Availability Impact High
CVSSv3 Version 3.1
SUSE Bugzilla entries: 1215701 [RESOLVED / INVALID], 1226223 [RESOLVED / INVALID]

No SUSE Security Announcements cross referenced.


SUSE Timeline for this CVE

CVE page created: Mon Sep 25 22:00:21 2023
CVE page last modified: Sat Aug 24 19:07:28 2024