Adobe: Difference between revisions

[[wikipedia:Adobe_Inc.|'''Adobe''']] is a software company based in San Jose, California that specializes in creative software such as photo editing, video editing, animation, illustration, web development, and more. Founded in 1982, the company developed the Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1992 as well as a full suite of creative software. Wide spread adoption of their products by novices, industry professionals, and nations states has enabled Adobe to carve out a significant market share in the creative software industry. In FY24, Adobe's Digital Media Segment reported $15.86B in revenue to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). <ref>[https://www.adobe.com/cc-shared/assets/investor-relations/pdfs/adbe-2024-annual-report.pdf ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934] </ref>   

In 2013, Adobe disclosed a data breach effecting approximately 3 million customers. This number was later revised upward, to approximately 38 million. <ref>{{Cite web |last=Finkle |first=Jim |date=29 Oct 2013 |title=Adobe data breach more extensive than previously disclosed |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/adobe-data-breach-more-extensive-than-previously-disclosed-idUSBRE99S1DJ |website=reuters.com/}}</ref> This event would result in a $1,000,000 dollar settlement and the promise of new security policies. <ref>{{Cite web |date=15 Nov 2016 |title=Adobe to Pay $1 Million, Update Security Policies to Resolve Multistate Investigation Into Data Breach |url=https://www.mass.gov/news/adobe-to-pay-1-million-update-security-policies-to-resolve-multistate-investigation-into-data-breach |website=mass.gov}}</ref> In 2019, Adobe's Elasticsearch database was discovered insecure by researchers, resulting in the potential exposure of approximately 7.5 million users information. <ref>{{Cite web |last=Khandelwal |first=Swati |date=26 Oct 2019 |title=Unsecured Adobe Server Exposes Data for 7.5 Million Creative Cloud Users |url=https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/adobe-database-leaked.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com}}</ref> Breaches impacting federal agencies in the U.S.A and Adobe Commerce/Magneto stores occurred in 2023 and 2024, respectively. <ref>{{Cite web |date=5 Dec 2023 |title=Threat Actors Exploit Adobe ColdFusion CVE-2023-26360 for Initial Access to Government Servers |url=https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa23-339a |website=cisa.gov}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Sansec Forensics Team |date=1 Oct 2024 |title=Thousands of Adobe Commerce stores hacked in competing CosmicSting campaigns |url=https://sansec.io/research/cosmicsting-fallout |website=sansec.io}}</ref>

===Transition to subscription based software===

Adobe initially distributed their software with perpetual licenses, where the user would pay only once for the ownership and access to a copy of an application (or, through Adobe's Creative Suite, a collection of applications). In 2011, Adobe introduced Creative Cloud, a service which allowed users to access an individual application or multiple applications for a monthly or yearly fee. In 2013, Adobe announced it would discontinue Creative Suite.  

As of today, the only way to legally access up-to-date versions of many of Adobe’s applications is through Creative Cloud. Moreover, many of the activation servers for perpetual licenses of prior versions of these applications have been shut down, meaning that even with a legitimate copy of the software and a serial number, the software cannot be activated.  

Creative Cloud offers monthly (with options to be billed either monthly or annually) or prepaid annual plans, as well as plans for individual applications and bundles containing multiple applications. These subscriptions can cost, for many of the individual applications, $22.99/month or $263.88 prepaid annually, and for Creative Cloud Pro (which includes 22 applications and some additional extras including 100gb of cloud storage), $69.99/month or $779.88 prepaid annually.  

For annually billed monthly subscriptions, there is also a cancellation fee after 14 days which charges the user 50% of the remaining balance of the contract (e.g., if the user cancels within the 7th month of an annually billed monthly subscription, the user will still have to pay 50% of the fee for the remaining 5 months, which, in the case of a $69.99 plan, for instance, would cost the user $174.98).  As for prepaid annual plans, they offer no refund or cancelation whatsoever after 14 days.