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khobar952000
Participant
January 6, 2021
Answered

Adobe Flash uploading GB's of data?

  • January 6, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 392 views

We were notified we'd exceeded our monthly data cap, and when analyzing the data usage found Adobe Flash accounted for over 5.5GB in one go. And again, today, I see another 5.2GB uploaded by Adobe Flash. We've scanned the computer and found nothing. We suspect it is part of a game or some kind of side-channel gaming communication link, maybe gaming streaming. This has been met with copious denials from the specific user, of course. 😉 

 

1) any idea what this could be?

2) any idea how to block it at the router (Asus RT-AC68U) without blocking Adobe in whole (my wife uses Photoshop and other tools).

 

Thanks,

 

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer khobar952000

    One more thought: 5GB is not very much. For example if you have a Mac that could be the size of a single macOS update. It is 2-3 app updates for Adobe Creative Cloud. Auto-updating is one of the demons for network bandwidth.


    The router is rather vague in the "Apps" area. Most of the data usage is "General".

    The router does allow me to look at individual computers to see which ones are doing what -- my son's computer accounts for almost half our data usage.

    I know 5GB isn't a huge amount, except it is every couple of days, and that adds up and is just enough to put us over the top at the end of the month. After talking with him last night, it turns out he is live streaming video 720p @10168355 as part of his gaming channel. Is a Mac update really that big??? Yes, this is a Windows system which seems to be wanting to update every other day for something. LOL.

    After investigating, it does not appear the router can block apps effectively, just in general categories.

     

    The main thing seems to be this issue has turned out to be annoying but not malicious. Annoying we can deal with. 😉

     

    Thank you very much for the insight and suggestions!

    2 replies

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    January 6, 2021

    Like the other poster said, Flash Player is a language runtime.  We run software written by other people and do the low-level work of rendering pixels and managing memory, etc.  We provide access to the webcam and microphone, and to file uploads.  The actual ports used would depend on the application, but in all probability, are just using the standard HTTPS port.  You could block it at the router, but nobody in your house will be doing much web surfing at that point.

     

    Tons of upload traffic to me says some flavor of outbound video streaming (cam chat, etc).  An open and honest dialog is almost certainly better than snooping on web traffic, but from a technical perspective, you should be able to log the hostnames of the web traffic passing through your router.

    K
    khobar952000Author
    Participant
    January 6, 2021

    Thank you!

     

    I logged into my router, and it shows data usage per device and also the top "apps" using the data. It shows various listings - General, HTTP protocol over TLS SSL, Adobe Flash, WOW game, Youtube, etc. The user - my son - does online gaming with chat. But the amount of data suggests HD video upload as well. He says he doesn't think that's it, said he found some kind of add-on he thought was sucking the bandwidth, etc. and closed it down. Today, however, there was another 5.2GB upload labeled as Adobe Flash.

    The other thought was a virus spitting out the data and it just showed up as Flash. We have run virus scans to no avail.

     

    My wife uses Adobe products. I mistakenly thought she had to be connected to Adobe.com to use those products, but she informs me no, they are running local on her computer. So, that was incorrect thinking on my part. However, from what's been said, the Flash use likely has nothing to do with Adobe anyway, and blocking that site would have no positive effect.

     

    I will check again with my son.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    January 7, 2021

    Some thoughts.

    1. The router manual doesn't explain what it means by "Flash" traffic. It must mean "the sort of traffic Flash does", which means it could be a Flash app or something else doing the same thing.

    2. If the router lets you block that kind of traffic it's worth a try.

    3. If the router lets you look at the IP addresses that are connected to the most that will perhaps tell you something useful.

    4. If the computer concerned runs Windows, you can use Task Manager to look at all the tasks ("Details") and see which ones are generating most network traffic.

    5. Unless the router specifically says your son's device is doing the uploading, check all of them.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    January 6, 2021

    Bear in mind Adobe Flash is a runtime; that is, it runs Flash apps, which could be written by anyone, to do anything. This can certainly include web connections. I don't know how you'd go about blocking it, but let's take a step back; how did you identify the traffic as Flash related? What would you mean by blocking " Adobe as a whole" since it presumably isn't contacting Adobe.com - or is it?

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