CVE-2026-50019 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) Information Exposure vulnerability in yt-dlp. A fix is available for yt-dlp — see the affected versions and patch details below.
yt-dlp: File Downloader cookie leak with curl
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-50019.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-50019 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,145 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
yt-dlpReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
If curl is used an external downloader for yt-dlp, cookies may be leaked to an unintended host upon HTTP redirect or when the host for download fragments differs from their parent manifest's.
This is the equivalent to GHSA-v8mc-9377-rwjj for the curl downloader. The vulnerable behavior is present in yt-dlp released since 2023.09.24.
Details
At the file download stage, the cookies are passed by yt-dlp to the file downloader via --cookie. However, unless these are loaded from a file, this operation does not activate the cookie engine. As a result, curl will send cookies with requests to domains or paths for which the cookies are not scoped.
An example of a potential attack scenario exploiting this vulnerability:
- an attacker has crafted a malicious website with an embedded URL designed to be detected by yt-dlp as a video download. This embedded URL has the domain of a trusted site that the user has loaded cookies for, and conducts an unvalidated redirect to a target URL.
- yt-dlp extracts this URL and calculates the cookies which are then passed to
curl. - the download URL redirects to a server controlled by the attacker, to which
curlforwards the user's sensitive cookie information.
Patches
yt-dlp version 2026.06.09 fixes this issue by doing the following:
- Pass the cookies through stdin via
--cookie -ifcurlis version 7.59 or higher. - Pass the cookies via
--cookie /dev/fd/0if the system supports this device file. - In all other cases create a temporary file, save the cookies and then pass via
--cookie <file>.
Workarounds
It is recommended to upgrade yt-dlp to version 2026.06.09 as soon as possible.
For users who are not able to upgrade:
- Do not use
--downloader curl.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | yt-dlp | ≥ 2023.9.24&&< 2026.6.9 | 2026.6.9pip install --upgrade 'yt-dlp==2026.6.9' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for yt-dlp, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update yt-dlp to 2026.6.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-50019 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2026-50019 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-50019. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-50019 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-50019 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.