Adobe modifies hosts file to detect whether Creative Cloud is installed

cromka

> for a very stupid reason. I cannot stomach Thom's articles. So borderline judgmental, holier than thou, feels like he only writes whenever there's something to criticize. No, it's not a stupid reason. Reason is OK, the execution is controversial.

lousken

How is defender not flagging this? Changing hosts file should raise alarms

vondur

If you don't like Adobe modifying your hosts file then I'd not use them. The checking for the software this way is kinda interesting though.

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47617463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624990

jameskraus

Honestly a pretty nifty way to detect if it's installed. I'm sure this can power a lot of nice features, like linking directly into adobe products if they're installed.

Terr_

Recycling a comment from prior discussion (4 days, 68 points, 13 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47617463 _______ Oh helllll no. Let's imagine an analogy for Adobe leadership: 1. You hired a night janitor to clean and vacuum your executive offices. 2. That janitor secretly stops at every desk-phone to alter the settings of voicemail accounts. 3. After the change, any external caller can dial a certain sequence to get a message of "Yes, this office was serviced by Adobe Janitorial!" What's your reaction when you discover it? Do you chuckle and say something like "boys will be boys"? No! You have a panic-call, Facilities revokes access, IT starts checking for other unauthorized surprises, HR looks into terminating contracts, and Legal advises whether you need to pursue data-breach notifications or lawsuits or criminal charges. * Is it acceptable because they had some permission to touch objects in the rooms? No. * Is it acceptable because the final effect is innocuous? No. * Is it acceptable because the employment contract had some vague sentence about "enhancing office communication experiences"? No. * Is it acceptable if they were just dumb instead of malicious? No. No person that would blithely cross those lines can be trusted near your stuff, full-stop.

ramon156

To be fair, to crack all adobe products requires a few reg keys. It's wild that they have just given up on pirates.

OptionOfT

Can't even reproduce it when setting location to Belgium, or CA or AZ. I must be missing something.

hypeatei

Looks like they got a wildcard certificate for *.creativecloud.adobe.com[0] so that the HTTPS connection works and so they don't have to publish DNS records for the "detect-ccd" subdomain to obtain a cert. Pretty neat setup, but also kinda hacky. 0: https://crt.sh/?q=creativecloud.adobe.com

j45

Make affinity sound like a smarter and smarter choice.

matsemann

Oh well, as a teenager, blocking adobe servers in hosts file was how you got to "phone activation" and could generate a code. So I guess we're even, heh.

nashashmi

So can I fool the website that I have CC installed?

Dwedit

Browsers could still do something about mixed Internet and LAN/Localhost requests by IP address regardless of the domain name.

1bpp

I owe thousands of dollars to amtlib.dll.

psyclobe

The most difficult of tasks is trying to un-unstall this pos app on windows.

hatradiowigwam

Whether it's run as root/administrator or not - you can disable this behavior by setting the immutable flag on /etc/hosts. No user, including root, can write to a file with the immutable flag set(although root could _remove_ the attribute and then write).

throw_await

what happens if you happen to use a DNS server that resolves this domain to the correct IP?

ryandrake

As a general principle, application developers should not have free rein to modify my system's configuration, and OS's should do their part to make it very difficult for developers. Installing your binaries into C:\Program Files\AppName or /usr/local/bin? Fine. Dumping crap all over C:\Windows or /usr or /boot or something? No way--the OS should make the developer obtain my consent (not just a blanket sudo-like escalation) to do these things. Sneakily modifying /etc/hosts to act against me? Get the hell outta here!

dpedu

I installed Creative Cloud just last week. No such entry was created in the hosts file on my macOs system.

cyanydeez

Are we sure this is to detect Creative Cloud instead of, trying to detect whether you have/had a pirated version of Adobe installed? Some reference material I've seen often involved blackholing adobe hosts to prevent installation software from verifying or otherwise talking to adobe.