[treebeard901]

All of the pirated Adobe installs require host file changes to redirect the license calls to local or nonexistent IPs. Maybe by Adobe adding this, it enables them to track pirated installs, since presumably the new host entry would reestablish the creative cloud connection...

Would be interesting to hear if any previously working cracked installs were broken...

[hrvstr]

Actually not 100% correct. AFAIK there are two patches around: an "online" variant that requires a clean host file but has access to more features and the "offline" variant that uses the host file to block traffic like you described.

[0dayz]

From friends I know who tried pirated Adobe software, yes they confirm it.

[nineteen999]

Yeah was thinking exactly the same thing.