CVE-2023-35934 yt-dlp File Downloader cookie leak

What is CVE-2023-35934?

CVE-2023-35934 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 6 Jul 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

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 manifest's 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-dlp's 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.

Weakness: CWE-601, CWE-200

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-35934?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including yt-dlp. It affects 4 products.

Products include Fedoraproject Fedora, Youtube-Dlc Project Youtube-Dlc, Yt-Dl Youtube-Dl, Yt-Dlp Project Yt-Dlp.

How do I fix CVE-2023-35934?

Upgrade yt-dlp to 2023.7.06 or later.

Is CVE-2023-35934 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-35934 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Fedoraproject Fedora

• CVE-2024-4577 PHP-CGI OS Command Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-39226 Grafana Authentication Bypass Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2019-5544 VMware ESXi and Horizon DaaS OpenSLP Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-4947 Google Chromium V8 Type Confusion Exploited Critical 9.6
• CVE-2024-4671 Google Chromium Visuals Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.6

All Fedoraproject Fedora vulnerabilities

Sources

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

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2023-35934, GHSA-v8mc-9377-rwjj, PYSEC-2026-2067, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-35934, openSUSE-SU-2024:13142-1.