GitHub Advisoryadvisory · npm

GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx Claude Code: Insecure System-Wide Configuration Loading Enables Local Privilege Escalation on Windows

MEDIUM Published 2026-04-17 Modified 2026-04-27 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)

Weakness · CWE (1)

  • CWE-426 Untrusted Search Path weakness

References