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Mt. Airy NewsApplication · Civitasmedia

CVE-2014-6950

MEDIUM · 5.4 CVSS v2.0 Published 2014-10-15
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
59/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
No privileges Zero-click

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 · unedited
The Mt. Airy News (aka com.soln.SBE4A803AD6430A6E9DBA5688AA644148) application 1.0069.b0069 for Android does not verify X.509 certificates from SSL servers, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof servers and obtain sensitive information via a crafted certificate.

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 · high confidence

The Mt. Airy News Android application fails to validate X.509 certificates when establishing SSL/TLS connections with backend servers. Without proper certificate chain validation and hostname verification, the app accepts any certificate presented by a server, enabling man-in-the-middle attackers to intercept, modify, or steal sensitive data transmitted between the app and legitimate servers.

MitigationImplement proper SSL/TLS certificate validation including chain-of-trust verification and hostname matching; consider certificate pinning for critical endpoints to prevent MITM attacks.

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
Mt. Airy NewsApplication
Affected:= 1.0069.b0069

CVSS 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
Adjacent
Complexity
M
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Partial
Integrity
Partial
Availability
Partial

AV:A/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/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 checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Verify installed application version
    On the Android device, go to Settings > Apps > Mt. Airy News, or use ADB command: adb shell pm list packages -v | grep -i 'airy' to retrieve the installed version name and version code.
    Affected if The installed version is 1.0069.b0069 exactly, as this is the single affected version listed for this CVE.
  2. Confirm app accepts invalid SSL certificates
    Set up a man-in-the-middle proxy (such as Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP, or mitmproxy) with an invalid or self-signed certificate. Configure the device to trust this proxy certificate, then attempt to intercept traffic while the app communicates with its backend server.
    Affected if The app successfully establishes connections and transmits data through the proxy without any certificate validation errors or warnings, indicating the app does not validate the server certificate chain.
  3. Inspect SSL validation implementation in app code
    Obtain the APK file (via ADB pull or alternative method), then decompile using tools such as jadx, apktool, or Androguard. Search the decompiled source code for SSL/TLS handling classes, specifically looking for implementations of TrustManager,HostnameVerifier, or X509TrustManager interfaces.
    Affected if The code contains custom TrustManager or HostnameVerifier implementations that unconditionally accept all certificates or all hostnames (for example, implementations that always return true from verify() methods or empty implementations of checkClientTrusted/checkServerTrusted).
  4. Check for absence of certificate pinning
    Using the decompiled APK from the previous step, search the source code for certificate pinning implementations using keywords such as 'pin', 'pinning', 'SHA256', 'PublicKey', or examine the network security configuration files for pin-set definitions.
    Affected if No certificate pinning logic is found, and the app relies solely on the default system TrustManager without any additional pinning layer for critical endpoints.

A user is affected if the installed Mt. Airy News Android app version is exactly 1.0069.b0069 and testing confirms the app accepts invalid certificates or lacks proper certificate chain validation in its code.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

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 data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Implement proper SSL/TLS certificate validation including chain-of-trust verification and hostname matching; consider certificate pinning for critical endpoints to prevent MITM attacks.

Fix this in Mt. Airy News Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation4.0 h
  • Testing2.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
10.0 hours of engineering $1,780
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2014-6950 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • 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