What is the CVSS score of CVE-2026-55404?

CVE-2026-55404 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8 (High). CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H. EPSS exploitation probability: 0.6%.

Which versions of yt-dlp are affected by CVE-2026-55404?

yt-dlp and youtube-dl contain a critical command injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-55404, CVSS 8.8) affecting users who download videos with shortcut file creation enabled.. A patch is available.

Is there a public PoC exploit available for CVE-2026-55404?

Yes, a public proof-of-concept exploit is available for CVE-2026-55404. Prioritise patching immediately. EPSS: 0.6%.

How to fix or mitigate CVE-2026-55404?

Within 24 hours, inventory all deployments of yt-dlp and youtube-dl in your environment, specifically identifying instances using the --write-link, --write-url-link, or --write-desktop-link options. Within 7 days, update both tools to version 2026.7.4 or later across all affected systems; for environments requiring extended testing, immediately disable the affected shortcut file generation options as an interim measure. Within 30 days, verify successful patching across the environment and consider implementing file integrity monitoring for .url and .desktop files to detect suspicious creation patterns.

yt-dlp CVE-2026-55404

EUVD-2026-42368 HIGH

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection') (CWE-74)

2026-07-08 GitHub_M

GHSA-6v4j-43gg-vj32

Microsoft Code Injection Yt Dlp Suse

8.8

CVSS 3.1 · NVD

Severity by source

Vendor (GitHub_M) PRIMARY

HIGH

qualitative

NVD

8.8 HIGH

AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

vuln.today AI

8.8 HIGH

Attacker-controlled remote metadata (AV:N, PR:N) but exploitation needs a non-default option plus the victim opening the shortcut (UI:R); opened shortcut yields full code execution (C/I/A:H).

3.1 AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

4.0 AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Primary rating from Vendor (GitHub_M).

CVSS VectorNVD

Attack Vector

Network

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

None

User Interaction

Required

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

High

Integrity

High

Availability

High

Lifecycle Timeline

Analysis Updated

Jul 13, 2026 - 19:35 vuln.today

v3 (cvss_changed)

Source Code Evidence Fetched

Jul 13, 2026 - 19:34 vuln.today

Analysis Updated

Jul 13, 2026 - 19:34 vuln.today

v2 (cvss_changed)

Re-analysis Queued

Jul 13, 2026 - 19:07 vuln.today

cvss_changed

CVSS changed

Jul 13, 2026 - 19:07 NVD

7.5 (HIGH) 8.8 (HIGH)

Patch available

Jul 08, 2026 - 21:04 EUVD

Analysis Generated

Jul 08, 2026 - 20:36 vuln.today

CVE Published

Jul 08, 2026 - 19:36 cve.org

HIGH 7.5

Blast Radius

ecosystem impact

† from your stack dependencies † transitive graph · vuln.today resolves 4-path depth

7 pypi packages depend on yt-dlp (7 direct, 0 indirect)

Ecosystem-wide dependent count for version 2026.7.4.

DescriptionNVD

yt-dlp and youtube-dl are command-line audio/video downloaders. Prior to 2026.7.4, the --write-link, --write-url-link, and --write-desktop-link options can write .url or .desktop shortcut files using attacker-controlled webpage_url or filename metadata without sufficient validation or escaping, allowing malicious file:// URI injection on Windows or newline-based desktop entry key injection on Linux that can execute commands if the generated shortcut is opened. This issue is fixed in version 2026.7.4.

AnalysisAI

Command injection in yt-dlp and youtube-dl before 2026.7.4 lets a malicious video/webpage host smuggle attacker-controlled data into shortcut files generated by the --write-link, --write-url-link, and --write-desktop-link options. Because webpage_url and filename metadata are written to .url/.desktop files without validation or escaping, an attacker can inject a file:// URI on Windows or a newline-based Desktop Entry key on Linux that runs commands when the victim later opens the generated shortcut. No public exploit identified at time of analysis; EPSS is modest at 0.55% and CISA SSVC records exploitation as none, but technical impact is rated total.

Technical ContextAI

yt-dlp is a Python-based command-line audio/video downloader (a maintained fork of youtube-dl) with a CPE of cpe:2.3:a:yt-dlp:yt-dlp. The vulnerable feature is its 'internet shortcut' writers, which serialize extracted metadata into platform shortcut formats: Windows .url files (which support a URL= key that can point at a file:// path) and freedesktop .desktop entries (which contain executable keys and honor localestring escaping rules). The root cause maps to CWE-74 (improper neutralization of special elements / injection): the URL field was written without scheme validation and the filename/localestring field was written without escaping control characters. The commit (b6590aa) fixes this by adding iri_to_uri(..., allowed_schemes=('http','https')) to reject non-web schemes such as file://, and by introducing _desktop_entry_localestring(), which escapes spaces, tab, CR, LF, and backslash per the freedesktop Desktop Entry value-type spec so newline key injection is neutralized.

RemediationAI

Vendor-released patch: upgrade to yt-dlp 2026.7.4 or later (release https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/tag/2026.07.04; fix commit https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/b6590aaa1e3808155d69c9a79a797ae484163789), which validates the URL scheme (only http/https allowed) and escapes Desktop Entry localestrings. Until you can upgrade, the most direct compensating control is to stop passing --write-link, --write-url-link, and --write-desktop-link when downloading from untrusted or user-supplied URLs - the trade-off is losing automatic shortcut generation. Additionally, run yt-dlp against only trusted sources, and instruct users/operators not to open shortcut files produced from arbitrary downloads; on Linux, treat generated .desktop files as untrusted and inspect them (or strip execute permission) before use. Consult GHSA-6v4j-43gg-vj32 for advisory details.