Adobe’s Piracy-Proof Software Gets Hacked A Few Days After Release

Adobe claimed before its release that its new software subscription service was piracy-proof. Now just days after the service went live, cracked versions of Photoshop and other Adobe applications are showing up on The Pirate Bay and other torrent networks.

Adobe’s creative suite of tools are some of the most pirated in the world because of their hefty retail prices, which can cost upwards of $700 for Photoshop. Adobe’s new focus is to charge $20 per month for a single application or $50 per month for the entire Creative Suite. Subscribers then receive the ability to install and upgrade Adobe Software over the internet.

The Adobe Creative Cloud as it is known requires installation disks to “phone home” over the internet to verify themselves. However, crackers have figured out how to isolate and remove the component that requires the use of Adobe server verification.

The cracked versions of the online suite were first pointed out by photo-editing blog PetaPixel, which pointed out BitTorrent seeds for ostensibly cracked versions of the Creative Cloud versions of Adobe products.

Cracked versions of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and the vector-based drawing application Illustrator all showed up online.

Since that original report, other apps have also shown up in The Pirate Bay searches, apps that now include Creative Cloud editions of Adobe Premiere (video editing), Flash Professional (Web apps), and After Effects (video effects). The entire Creative Suite for Mac also showed up but was quickly removed.

A lot of the cracked versions work but also contain malware, which means users must install at their own risk. Experts suggest scanning each installer with a malware scanner before moving forward.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is also available for only $100 or less if you just need a stripped down version of Photoshop’s capabilities.

Are you surprised that Adobe’s Piracy-Proof software was hacked in just a few short days?