What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-50023: yt-dlp: Dangerous file type creation via insufficient filename sanitization (Bypass of CVE-2024-38519)

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.6 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: 2026-06-23 · updated 2026-06-26
• Weakness: CWE-641

Description

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.

Affected products

• yt-dlp: before 2026.06.09 — fixed in 2026.06.09

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: yt-dlp 2026.06.09. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases/tag/2026.06.09.230517
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/e578e265f7c6ca94a74b30e0d8d6196a4d19fb6a
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2026.06.09
• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-c6mh-fpjc-4pr3

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