Illustrator 2025 (v29.4) – Plugin Cannot Connect via TCP Socket Anymore

Hello everyone,

I'm developing a C++ plugin for Adobe Illustrator that uses a TCP socket to communicate with a local or remote server (using asio). This has worked reliably in all previous versions of Illustrator — including 2024 and up to version 29.1 of 2025.

However, starting with Illustrator 2025 v29.4, the plugin can no longer establish a socket connection. On Windows, the call to socket.connect() fails with the following error from third party lib:

On macOS, Illustrator crashes immediately when trying to connect to a socket.

After testing across environments and reverting to older versions, it's clear that this is a new restriction introduced in v29.4. It seems Adobe has tightened sandboxing or plugin isolation in a way that blocks network access from third party plugins.

Has anyone from Adobe or the community encountered this?
Is this an intentional security change?
Are there any plans to allow plugin-socket communication with specific permissions or entitlements?

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Best regards,
Illia