CVE-2026-35603

HIGH

Claude Code: Insecure System-Wide Configuration Loading Enables Local Privilege Escalation on Windows

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

Claude Code is an agentic coding tool. In versions prior to 2.1.75 on Windows, Claude Code loaded the 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. This issue has been fixed on version 2.1.75.

Scores

CVSS v3 7.3
EPSS 0.0001
EPSS Percentile 1.4%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact total

Details

CWE
CWE-426
Status published
Products (3)
anthropic/claude_code < 2.1.75
anthropic-ai/claude-code 0 - 2.1.75npm
anthropics/claude-code < 2.1.75
Published Apr 17, 2026
Tracked Since Apr 18, 2026