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HIGH severity

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

HIGH

GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx is a high-severity (CVSS 7.3) CWE-426 vulnerability in @anthropic-ai/claude-code. A fix is available for @anthropic-ai/claude-code — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asCVE-2026-35603
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Nov 10, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
  • CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.1%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs1th percentile — riskier than 1% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.22%0.43%0.65%0.0%0.1%May 26Sep 26Nov 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected

How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.

281other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream
@anthropic-ai/claude-codenpm
15.3Mdownloads / week

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.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
📦npm@anthropic-ai/claude-codeall versions2.1.75npm install @anthropic-ai/claude-code@2.1.75

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
claude codeanthropic
< 2.1.75
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @anthropic-ai/claude-code, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update @anthropic-ai/claude-code to 2.1.75 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.

Frequently Asked Questions

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 sys
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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Claude Code: Insecure System-Wide Configuration…