Adobe secretly modifies your hosts file for the stupidest reason

[osnews@mstdn.social]

Adobe secretly modifies your hosts file for the stupidest reason

If you're using Windows or macOS and have Adobe Creative Cloud installed, you may want to take a peek at your hosts file. It turns out Adobe adds a bunch of entries into the hosts file, for a very stupid reason.

I found that in my hosts file the other day too, and I investigated to find why they're doing

https://www.osnews.com/story/144737/adobe-secretly-modifies-your-hosts-file-for-the-stupidest-reason/

#ClownCar

[nowayeast@mastodon.social]

@osnews sounds like malware to me, beaconing back to a C2 server.

Now the flip side, what happens if I insert that line into my host file or maybe an employers computer host file? Do they try to use it to say hey you aren't paying for creative cloud? Or can I then access features I shouldn't?

[kawazoe@transfem.social]

@osnews@mstdn.social Saying that they use this to detect if you already have CC is a bit diminishing of what they can actually use this for. Any system can use this. It can be their site, marketing emails, ads... or even third party softwares like malware attempting to remotely detect the presence of CC on your machine. I wouldn't be surprised if this was also usable by the Adobe fonts loader for sites using those.

[isocat@tiggi.es]

@osnews »adds another 127.0.0.1 entry in /etc/hosts«

[mmu_man@m.g3l.org]

@osnews well they used to use the first sectors on disk, overwriting GRUB, so I guess that's a progress?

[aeveltstra@mastodon.social]

It's to detect whether you have it installed already.

#savedyouaclick

[lufthans@mastodon.social]

@osnews Why and how does Adobe have access to change protected files?

It shouldn't have access to /etc/hosts or the raw disk