CVE-2023-46121
Generic Extractor MITM Vulnerability in yt-dlp
Reported by github_m · Published November 14, 2023
yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes. The Generic Extractor in yt-dlp is vulnerable to an attacker setting an arbitrary proxy for a request to an arbitrary url, allowing the attacker to MITM the request made from yt-dlp's HTTP session. This could lead to cookie exfiltration in some cases. Version 2023.11.14 removed the ability to smuggle `http_headers` to the Generic extractor, as well as other extractors that use the same pattern. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should disable the Ggneric extractor (or only pass trusted sites with trusted content) and ake caution when using `--no-check-certificate`.
Risk scores
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| yt-dlp | yt-dlp | >= 2022.10.04, < 2023.11.14 |
| yt-dlp | yt-dlp | 2022.10.04 |
| alpine | yt-dlp | 0 |
| PyPI | yt-dlp | 2022.10.04 |
Timeline
- Nov 14, 2023 CVE Published
- Nov 15, 2023 EPSS Score (30 in total, the first dated here)
- Jan 29, 2026 Security Advisory (2 in total, the first dated here)
- Jan 29, 2026 CVE Updated
- Aug 1, 2026 Coalition ESS Score
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The same record, from the CLI:
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References
- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-3ch3-jhc6-5r8x x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/f04b5bedad7b281bee9814686bba1762bae092eb x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2023.11.14 x_refsource_MISC
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-46121 advisory
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-3ch3-jhc6-5r8x advisory