yt-dlp is a command-line program to download videos from video sites. During file downloads, yt-dlp or the external downloaders that yt-dlp employs may leak cookies on HTTP redirects to a different host, or leak them when the host for download fragments differs from their parent manifests host. This vulnerable behavior is present in yt-dlp prior to 2023.07.06 and nightly 2023.07.06.185519. All native and external downloaders are affected, except for curl and httpie (version 3.1.0 or later).
At the file download stage, all cookies are passed by yt-dlp to the file downloader as a Cookie header, thereby losing their scope. This also occurs in yt-dlps info JSON output, which may be used by external tools. As a result, the downloader or external tool may indiscriminately send cookies with requests to domains or paths for which the cookies are not scoped.
yt-dlp version 2023.07.06 and nightly 2023.07.06.185519 fix this issue by removing the Cookie header upon HTTP redirects; having native downloaders calculate the Cookie header from the cookiejar, utilizing external downloaders built-in support for cookies instead of passing them as header arguments, disabling HTTP redirectiong if the external downloader does not have proper cookie support, processing cookies passed as HTTP headers to limit their scope, and having a separate field for cookies in the info dict storing more information about scoping
Some workarounds are available for those who are unable to upgrade. Avoid using cookies and user authentication methods. While extractors may set custom cookies, these usually do not contain sensitive information. Alternatively, avoid using --load-info-json. Or, if authentication is a must: verify the integrity of download links from unknown sources in browser (including redirects) before passing them to yt-dlp; use curl as external downloader, since it is not impacted; and/or avoid fragmented formats such as HLS/m3u8, DASH/mpd and ISM.
The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Youtube-dlc | Youtube-dlc_project | * | * |
| Youtube-dl | Yt-dl | 2015.01.25 (including) | * |
| Yt-dlp | Yt-dlp_project | * | 2023.07.06 (excluding) |
| Yt-dlp | Yt-dlp_project | * | 2023.07.06.185519 (excluding) |
| Yt-dlp | Ubuntu | bionic | * |
| Yt-dlp | Ubuntu | kinetic | * |
| Yt-dlp | Ubuntu | lunar | * |
| Yt-dlp | Ubuntu | mantic | * |
| Yt-dlp | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Yt-dlp | Ubuntu | xenial | * |
There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:
Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:
Information exposures can occur in different ways:
It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.