{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "attribution": [
    {
      "source": "CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities",
      "url": "https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog",
      "licence": "US government work"
    },
    {
      "source": "GitHub Advisory Database",
      "url": "https://github.com/advisories",
      "licence": "CC BY 4.0"
    },
    {
      "source": "Have I Been Pwned",
      "url": "https://haveibeenpwned.com/",
      "licence": "CC BY 4.0"
    },
    {
      "source": "CVE Program (CVE records)",
      "url": "https://www.cve.org/Legal/TermsOfUse",
      "licence": "CVE Terms of Use",
      "notice": "Copyright © 1999-2026, The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a trademark and the CVE logo is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.",
      "terms": "CVE Usage: MITRE hereby grants you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE™). Any copy you make for such purposes is authorized provided that you reproduce MITRE's copyright designation and this license in any such copy."
    },
    {
      "source": "FIRST EPSS",
      "url": "https://www.first.org/epss/",
      "licence": "free to use; FIRST requests attribution"
    }
  ],
  "record": {
    "id": "CVE-2023-40581",
    "sourceURL": "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-40581",
    "idYear": 2023,
    "status": "PUBLISHED",
    "publishedAt": "2023-09-25T18:54:00.204Z",
    "updatedAt": "2024-09-24T14:48:55.952Z",
    "importedAt": "2026-10-24T01:56:58.683Z",
    "snapshot": {
      "id": "cve_2026-10-24_midnight_baseline",
      "at": "2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z",
      "source": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/releases/tag/cve_2026-10-24_0100Z"
    },
    "facts": {
      "title": "yt-dlp command injection when using `%q` in `--exec` on Windows",
      "summary": "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.\n",
      "affected": [
        {
          "vendor": "yt-dlp",
          "product": "yt-dlp",
          "versions": [
            {
              "version": ">= 2021.04.11, < 2023.09.24",
              "status": "affected"
            },
            {
              "version": "< nightly 2023.09.24.003044",
              "status": "affected"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}