CVE-2026-50574
HighCVSS 8.3Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk32th percentile — higher than 32% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in yt-dlp prior to version 2026.06.09 allows an attacker to write arbitrary files by passing unsanitized input to the external tool aria2c when downloading HLS/DASH streams. On Windows systems this leads to immediate arbitrary code execution, while on other platforms code execution occurs on the next yt-dlp invocation.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can remotely write a malicious file to any system location, enabling immediate system compromise on Windows and subsequent compromise on other platforms when yt-dlp is used again.
Recommendation
Immediately update yt-dlp to version 2026.06.09 or later. If updating is not possible, temporarily disable the use of aria2c as an external downloader.
Original NVD description (English source)
yt-dlp is a command-line audio/video downloader. Prior to 2026.06.09, if aria2c is used as an external downloader for a fragmented manifest format (such as an HLS/DASH stream), yt-dlp passes insufficiently sanitized input to aria2c that allows an attacker to perform an arbitrary file write. On Windows platforms, this can lead to immediate arbitrary code execution. On non-Windows platforms, this can lead to arbitrary code execution upon the next invocation of yt-dlp. This vulnerability is fixed in 2026.06.09.