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.
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.
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.
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.
Doing this again, now (well into adulthood): recently gifted a "broken" 2013 MacPro[0], and have set it up as my retro CS4 workhorse (decades old software on a decade old machine). Hosts/PiHole ready, blocking "*adobe*" entirely.
Only problem now is I cannot find four's `FCKGW-RHQQ2-`... my oldmanfish surfs onwards, Santiago remaining uncertain. For now I just don't quit and never shut down (fresh install allows limited launches).
[0] RAM slot was jamming, not allowing proper seating
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).
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!
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.
I don't know whether is still does this, but 8-9 years ago I discovered that Acrobat overwrites the COM registry entries for Microsoft Active Accessibility (oleacc.dll) such that any application attempting to instantiate MSAA gets the Adobe DLL instead of the system DLL. This actually broke the stuff I was working on and had to override it in my app manifest to forcibly use the system version.
I inquired about it and got some BS about how they absolutely _had_ to do this to intercept MSAA instantiations across the system, when in reality they were using a global solution to solve a local problem.
Adobe has been user hostile since Create Suite launched. Where were you? They have been hiding backdoors in windows machines and Mac machines since at least 2010.
Honestly, I've been dealing with crap like this for so many decades that I'm a fervent supporter of every "installer" just showing and logging a Git PR-styled diff to the user of every file and system change, everywhere in the system, complete with the ability to rollback from it.
I am tired of inconsistent logging, opaque system changes, and vendors generally being malicious with endpoint security in the name of protecting profit.
Screw the "show me the log" option that scrolls by in a flash and you can't get back to, show me the damn diff first.
Maybe you will read it carefully every single time (and to be clear, I doubt even that) but for the majority of users this will only lead to increasing the already excessive amount of decision-fatigue they deal with when interacting with software day to day.
People already blindly click through sequences of confirmation boxes when they think they already know what they're doing. Odds are a million to one you've done that very thing before yourself. Adding even more friction is only going to make the average user spam the "next" button even more fervently.
41 comments
[ 7.8 ms ] story [ 74.3 ms ] threadI 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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624990
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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.
I must be missing something.
0: https://crt.sh/?q=creativecloud.adobe.com
Doing this again, now (well into adulthood): recently gifted a "broken" 2013 MacPro[0], and have set it up as my retro CS4 workhorse (decades old software on a decade old machine). Hosts/PiHole ready, blocking "*adobe*" entirely.
Only problem now is I cannot find four's `FCKGW-RHQQ2-`... my oldmanfish surfs onwards, Santiago remaining uncertain. For now I just don't quit and never shut down (fresh install allows limited launches).
[0] RAM slot was jamming, not allowing proper seating
I inquired about it and got some BS about how they absolutely _had_ to do this to intercept MSAA instantiations across the system, when in reality they were using a global solution to solve a local problem.
I am tired of inconsistent logging, opaque system changes, and vendors generally being malicious with endpoint security in the name of protecting profit.
Screw the "show me the log" option that scrolls by in a flash and you can't get back to, show me the damn diff first.
https://www.mothersruin.com/software/SuspiciousPackage/