Skip to main content

URL Redirection to Untrusted Site ('Open Redirect')

CVE-2023-35934

Severity High
Score 8.2/10

Summary

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 all versions of youtube-dlc, youtube-dl versions 2015.01.25 through 2021.12.17, yt-dlp versions 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. This issue is fixed 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. 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.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • LOW
  • CHANGED
  • REQUIRED
  • NONE
  • HIGH
  • NONE

CWE-601 - Open Redirect

An open redirect attack employs a URL parameter, HTML refresh tags, or a DOM based location change to exploit the trust of a vulnerable domain to direct the users to a malicious website. The attack could lead to higher severity vulnerabilities such as unauthorized access control, account takeover, XSS, and more.

Advisory Timeline

  • Published