Hey everyone, thanks for letting me be here. I’m a complete newbie, so sorry in advance if something sounds dumb.

I used Adobe products legally in the past, but the plugins became too expensive, so I switched and used the GenP patch for AE, PR, IL and PS. Everything worked fine at first. I also added and activated the rules inside the program so no external connections should happen.

Later I noticed files like ACC.log being created. After checking some of the code with ChatGPT, I was told it looks like attempts to communicate with Adobe. That made me uncomfortable, so I started checking all running Adobe processes and network activity using PowerShell and ChatGPT. After that, I disabled everything that was active or could access the internet. I also disabled Adobe background processes, so when I open something like After Effects, only AE itself runs.

What I actually did

• Identified Adobe processes (CCXProcess, AdobeIPCBroker, Crash Processor, CEPHtmlEngine, Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.)

• Checked network activity: – No external connections found – Only local/internal communication on xx.xx.xx

• Disabled the scheduled task “Launch Adobe CCXProcess” so Creative Cloud components don’t auto-start.

• Stopped Adobe background services (CCXProcess, AdobeIPCBroker, TeamProjectsLocalHub, dynamiclinkmanager, etc.)

• Created permanent Windows Firewall rules (inbound + outbound = block): – First for specific executables – Then the “nuclear option”: automatically scanned Adobe folders, found 163 Adobe .exe files, and blocked every single one → about 334 firewall rules.

• Verified again with all apps running (AE, PR, PS, IL): → No external IP connections → Only internal/local communication on xx.xx.xx

** Things that stood out / seemed worth checking**

• A lot of Adobe background processes (CCXProcess, AdobeIPCBroker, CEPHtmlEngine multiple times, TeamProjectsLocalHub, crashpad_handler, node, AIRobin…) → Typical cloud, service, telemetry and panel modules.

• Internal network services running Several processes had listening ports and local connections. → Shows Adobe heavily relies on internal micro-services (panels, Dynamic Link, CC hooks).

• Watchdog behavior Adobe Crash Processor and IPCBroker restarted themselves after being killed. → Typical Creative Cloud watchdog behavior.

• Very large amount of modules 163 Adobe executables found. → Important, because otherwise single unchecked modules could still communicate.

My question: Can this level of blocking/breaking background services damage the patch or the software in any way? Right now my Adobe setup is basically running in a completely isolated offline environment.