CVE-2026-26331 - yt-dlp: Arbitrary Command Injection when using the `--netrc-cmd` option

CVE ID : CVE-2026-26331 Published : Feb. 24, 2026, 3:16 a.m. | 1 hour, 12 minutes ago Description : yt-dlp is a command-line audio/video downloader. Starting in version 2023.06.21 and prior to version 2026.02.21, when yt-dlp's `--netrc-cmd` command-line option (or `netrc_cmd` Python API parameter) is used, an attacker could achieve arbitrary command injection on the user's system with a maliciously crafted URL. yt-dlp maintainers assume the impact of this vulnerability to be high for anyone who uses `--netrc-cmd` in their command/configuration or `netrc_cmd` in their Python scripts. Even though the maliciously crafted URL itself will look very suspicious to many users, it would be trivial for a maliciously crafted webpage with an inconspicuous URL to covertly exploit this vulnerability via HTTP redirect. Users without `--netrc-cmd` in their arguments or `netrc_cmd` in their scripts are unaffected. No evidence has been found of this exploit being used in the wild. yt-dlp version 2026.02.21 fixes this issue by validating all netrc