Path traversal in spotipy

Summary

If a malicious URI is passed to the library, the library can be tricked into performing an operation on a different API endpoint than intended.

Details

The code Spotipy uses to parse URIs and URLs accepts user data too liberally which allows a malicious user to insert arbitrary characters into the path that is used for API requests. Because it is possible to include .., an attacker can redirect for example a track lookup via spotifyApi.track() to an arbitrary API endpoint like playlists, but this is possible for other endpoints as well.

Before the security advisory feature was enabled on GitHub, I was already in contact with Stéphane Bruckert via e-mail, and he asked me to look into a potential fix.

My recommendation is to perform stricter parsing of URLs and URIs, which I implemented in the patch included at the end of the report. If you prefer, I can also invite you to a private fork of the repository.

Impact

The impact of this vulnerability depends heavily on what operations a client application performs when it handles a URI from a user and how it uses the responses it receives from the API.