CVE-2023-23608: spotipy Path traversal vulnerability that may lead to type confusion in URI handling code

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-01-26 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Spotipy is a light weight Python library for the Spotify Web API. In versions prior to 2.22.1, if a malicious URI is passed to the library, the library can be tricked into performing an operation on a different API endpoint than intended. The code Spotipy uses to parse URIs and URLs allows an attacker to insert arbitrary characters into the path that is used for API requests. Because it is possible to include "..", an attacker can redirect for example a track lookup via spotifyApi.track() to an arbitrary API endpoint like playlists, but this is possible for other endpoints as well. The impact of this vulnerability depends heavily on what operations a client application performs when it handles a URI from a user and how it uses the responses it receives from the API. This issue is patched in version 2.22.1.

Affected products

spotipy-dev spotipy: before 2.22.1 — fixed in 2.22.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: spotipy-dev spotipy 2.22.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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