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HIGH7.3

GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx

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

Quick fix

GHSA-5cwg-9f6j-9jvx — @anthropic-ai/claude-code: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.

npm install @anthropic-ai/claude-code@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.

Are you affected?

Enter the version of the package you're using.

Affected packages

npm/@anthropic-ai/claude-code
Introduced in: 0Fixed in: 2.1.75
Fixnpm install @anthropic-ai/claude-code@2.1.75

References