this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Piracy
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Unless I'm missing something, the only reason Adobe even could disable your pirated Photoshop is if you haven't blocked the application from accessing the internet in your firewall. C'mon, that's basic stuff. =)
Sadly, they do license key checking via a DNS lookup, and not all application-level firewalls block DNS.
Yeah I haven't been bothering recently, I gotta be honest. The m0nkrus releases are just too easy haha.
Is the hosts file hack still worth doing, or just go into Windows Firewall and take away its internet access?
Just create an outbound firewall rule for the Photoshop exe that blocks internet access. That way it can't phone home.
They check the license key hasn't been revoked via a DNS lookup, but not at install time, so often the user installs, uses, then miraculously finds it disabled a few weeks later; then runs to find a new copy/keygen and the whole situation starts again.
(e: they also route the DNS lookup via bonjour if it's running, so you have to keep bonjour segregated from the internet too, which can cause other problems)