CVE-2026-55404: Yt-Dlp Project Yt-Dlp

High severity, CVSS 8.8. EPSS: 0.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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.

Affected products

Published 2026-07-08. Last modified 2026-07-13.