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

What is CVE-2023-23608?

CVE-2023-23608 is a path traversal vulnerability in spotipy-dev spotipy, published on 24 Jan 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official 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.

Weakness: CWE-22

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-23608?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including spotipy. It affects 1 product.

Products include Spotipy Project Spotipy.

How do I fix CVE-2023-23608?

Upgrade spotipy to 2.22.1 or later.

Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.

Is CVE-2023-23608 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2023-23608 exists.

Other vulnerabilities in spotipy-dev spotipy

• CVE-2025-27154 Spotipy's cache file, containing spotify auth token, is created with overly broad permissions High 8.4

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-q764-g6fm-555v, PYSEC-2026-926.