diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 0f123645d9..48a33eb6f4 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -194,6 +194,7 @@
  * Add the ability to disable bulk loading of SSTables (CASSANDRA-18781)
  * Clean up obsolete functions and simplify cql_version handling in cqlsh (CASSANDRA-18787)
 Merged from 5.0:
+ * Avoid CQLSH throwing an exception loading .cqlshrc on non-supported platforms (CASSANDRA-20478)
  * Relax validation of snapshot name as a part of SSTable files path validation (CASSANDRA-20649)
  * Optimize initial skipping logic for SAI queries on large partitions (CASSANDRA-20191)
  * zero copy streaming allocates direct memory that isn't used, but does help to fragment the memory space (CASSANDRA-20577)
diff --git a/pylib/cqlshlib/util.py b/pylib/cqlshlib/util.py
index 96d9bd272e..4474a46331 100644
--- a/pylib/cqlshlib/util.py
+++ b/pylib/cqlshlib/util.py
@@ -74,12 +74,15 @@ def identity(x):
 def is_file_secure(filename):
     try:
         st = os.stat(filename)
+        uid = os.getuid()
     except OSError as e:
         if e.errno != errno.ENOENT:
             raise
         # the file doesn't exist, the security of it is irrelevant
         return True
-    uid = os.getuid()
+    except AttributeError as e:
+        # not-Unix os
+        return True
 
     # Skip enforcing the file owner and UID matching for the root user (uid == 0).
     # This is to allow "sudo cqlsh" to work with user owned credentials file.