Detections
Analytics
Alpine: multiple yt-dlp packages: security update to 2023.09.24-r0
high Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security Plugin ID 408130
Description
There are packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability referenced in the following CVE:- yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes. yt-dlp allows the user to provide shell
command lines to be executed at various stages in its download steps through the `--exec` flag. This flag
allows output template expansion in its argument, so that metadata values may be used in the shell
commands. The metadata fields can be combined with the `%q` conversion, which is intended to quote/escape
these values so they can be safely passed to the shell. However, the escaping used for `cmd` (the shell
used by Python's `subprocess` on Windows) does not properly escape special characters, which can allow for
remote code execution if `--exec` is used directly with maliciously crafted remote data. This
vulnerability only impacts `yt-dlp` on Windows, and the vulnerability is present regardless of whether
`yt-dlp` is run from `cmd` or from `PowerShell`. Support for output template expansion in `--exec`, along
with this vulnerable behavior, was added to `yt-dlp` in version 2021.04.11. yt-dlp version 2023.09.24
fixes this issue by properly escaping each special character. `\n` will be replaced by `\r` as no way of
escaping it has been found. It is recommended to upgrade yt-dlp to version 2023.09.24 as soon as possible.
Also, always be careful when using --exec, because while this specific vulnerability has been patched,
using unvalidated input in shell commands is inherently dangerous. For Windows users who are not able to
upgrade: 1. Avoid using any output template expansion in --exec other than {} (filepath). 2. If expansion
in --exec is needed, verify the fields you are using do not contain ", | or &. 3. Instead of using --exec,
write the info json and load the fields from it instead. (CVE-2023-40581)
See Also
Plugin Details
Severity: High
ID: 408130
Version: Revision 1.34
Type: Local
Published: 12/7/2023
Updated: 7/2/2026
Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security
Risk Information
VPR
Risk Factor: Medium
Score: 4.9
Percentile: 57.58
CVSS v2
Risk Factor: High
Base Score: 7.2
Temporal Score: 5.6
Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
CVSS Score Source: CVE-2023-40581
CVSS v3
Risk Factor: High
Base Score: 7.8
Temporal Score: 7
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C
Vulnerability Information
Exploit Available: true
Exploit Ease: Exploits are available
Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/24/2023
Reference Information
CVE: CVE-2023-40581