CVE-2014-4417
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedSafari in Apple OS X before 10.10 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (universal Push Notification outage) via a web site that triggers an uncaught SafariNotificationAgent exception by providing a crafted Push Notification.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceA crafted Push Notification delivered through a malicious website triggers an uncaught exception in SafariNotificationAgent on OS X before 10.10. This exception causes the Push Notification service to fail, resulting in a denial of service where all Push Notifications are disabled across the system.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data<= 10.9.5CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Partial
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Check your OS X versionClick the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select 'About This Mac', and note the version number displayed under the Mac OS X nameAffected if The version shown is 10.9.5 or earlier (any version 10.9.0 through 10.9.5)
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Verify Push Notification service statusOpen Terminal and run: `ps aux | grep -i SafariNotificationAgent` to check if the SafariNotificationAgent process is runningAffected if The process is not running or has exited unexpectedly, indicating the service is disabled
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Confirm Push Notifications are disabledAttempt to enable Push Notifications in Safari: Open Safari, go to Safari > Preferences > Notifications, and check if notifications are available or grayed outAffected if The Notifications pane is unavailable, shows all notifications disabled, or returns an error indicating the service is unavailable
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Check system logs for Push Notification failuresOpen Terminal and run: `log show --predicate 'process == "SafariNotificationAgent"' --last 24h` to review recent log entries for the serviceAffected if Logs show uncaught exceptions, crashes, or failure messages related to SafariNotificationAgent
You are affected if your OS X version is 10.9.5 or earlier AND Push Notifications are disabled or the SafariNotificationAgent service is not running due to the uncaught exception vulnerability.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUpdate to OS X 10.10 or later, which includes the patched Safari version that properly handles the crafted Push Notification and prevents the uncaught exception.
- Consultation1.0 h
- Implementation1.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2014-4417 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2014-4417 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data