Late last night, Adobe issued a patch to fix a serious problem that had arisen in its latest update of its Creative Cloud software. On Friday, some users — particularly those who used the Backblaze backup service — found that installing the CC update would delete the contents of whatever was the “first” folder (listed alphabetically) in the root system directory. The script that caused the problem would remove contents of the (usually invisible) first-listed folder.
The deletion of user data does not occur in the simple act of installing the update, but only when users would then open the applications, which triggered the script that cause the problem. Backblaze, which uses a hidden “.bzvol” folder, discovered the problem from user reports and subsequently confirmed the issue, notifying Adobe. In some cases, however, users who had the hidden Apple system folder “.DocumentRevisions-V100” at the top of their root drive would lose critical autosave and version history data, which could result in problems with updating and restoring revisions, along with other system problems.
Shortly after receiving the reports, the company pulled the update while they tracked down the issue. “Earlier today we were notified of an issue with an update to the Creative Cloud Desktop application on Mac that we rolled out earlier in the week. In a small number of cases, the updater may incorrectly remove some files from the system root directory with user writeable permissions,” the company said. The corrected update is now available for Mac or Windows installs.
Users who were affected by the flaw are advised to contact Adobe customer support. The corrected update will also appear automatically for most users within the next 24 hours, and should be installed.
