GitHub Advisoryadvisory · npm
GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx Claude Code: Insecure System-Wide Configuration Loading Enables Local Privilege Escalation on Windows
MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-35603
- Ecosystem
- npm
- Packages
- @anthropic-ai/claude-code
- Severity
- Moderate
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-426
- Reviewed
- 2026-04-17
Affected packages
• npm @anthropic-ai/claude-code: < 2.1.75 → fixed in 2.1.75
Description
On Windows, Claude Code loaded system-wide default configuration from `C:\ProgramData\ClaudeCode\managed-settings.json` without validating directory ownership or access permissions. Because the `ProgramData` directory is writable by non-administrative users by default and the `ClaudeCode` subdirectory was not pre-created or access-restricted, a low-privileged local user could create this directory and place a malicious configuration file that would be automatically loaded for any user launching Claude Code on the same machine. Exploiting this would have required a shared multi-user Windows system and a victim user to launch Claude Code after the malicious configuration was placed.
Users on standard Claude Code auto-update have received this fix already. Users performing manual updates are advised to update to the latest version.
Thank you to hackerone.com/edbr for reporting this issue.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-35603 Claude Code is an agentic coding tool. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-426 Untrusted Search Path weakness