Adobe Diddles With Your /etc/hosts File

“thenickdude”, on Reddit:

They’re using this to detect if you have Creative Cloud already installed when you visit on their website.

When you visit https://www.adobe.com/home, they load this image using JavaScript:

https://detect-ccd.creativecloud.adobe.com/cc.png

If the DNS entry in your hosts file is present, your browser will therefore connect to their server, so they know you have Creative Cloud installed, otherwise the load fails, which they detect.

They used to just hit http://localhost:\/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.

(Via Thom Holwerda at OSNews.)

They didn’t have to do this, of course. In fact, quite obviously, they definitely should not be doing this. Adobe is just a third-party developer, no better, no more trusted, no more important than any other. Imagine if every piece of software on your computer added entries to your /etc/hosts file. Madness. Adobe should be ashamed of themselves. Adobe used to be a bastion of best practices for developers to follow. Now their installer/updater is indistinguishable from malware.

See also: Marc Edwards on Mastodon, and Michael Tsai.

★ Thursday, 9 April 2026