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CVE-2023-46121: Generic Extractor MITM Vulnerability in yt-dlp

• Severity: low (CVSS 3.7 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-11-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-444

Description

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes. The Generic Extractor in yt-dlp is vulnerable to an attacker setting an arbitrary proxy for a request to an arbitrary url, allowing the attacker to MITM the request made from yt-dlp's HTTP session. This could lead to cookie exfiltration in some cases. Version 2023.11.14 removed the ability to smuggle `http_headers` to the Generic extractor, as well as other extractors that use the same pattern. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should disable the Ggneric extractor (or only pass trusted sites with trusted content) and ake caution when using `--no-check-certificate`.

Affected products

• yt-dlp: from 2022.10.04 before 2023.11.14 — fixed in 2023.11.14

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: yt-dlp 2023.11.14. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/f04b5bedad7b281bee9814686bba1762bae092eb
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2023.11.14
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-3ch3-jhc6-5r8x
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/f04b5bedad7b281bee9814686bba1762bae092eb
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2023.11.14
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-3ch3-jhc6-5r8x

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