Claude Code: Insecure System-Wide Configuration Loading Enables Local Privilege Escalation on Windows
Claude Code: Insecure System-Wide Configuration Loading Enables Local Privilege Escalation on Windows
Medium severity. Affects @anthropic-ai/claude-code < 2.1.75. Upgrade to 2.1.75 or later.
CVE-2026-35603 / GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx · severity: medium · CVSS 7.3 · npm
Affected
@anthropic-ai/claude-code< 2.1.75 → fixed in 2.1.75
Details
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.
Source: GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx — GitHub Advisory Database (CC-BY-4.0).