What is AdobeGCClient.exe

[PeterFacey]

The update on Sept 16th seems to have introduced this progam, which tries to interfere with F-Secure antivirus.

What is this program, and its associated .dll, and why is it interacting with F-Secure?

If Adobe is going to do this kind of thing, why the heck doesn't it at least warn people in the release notes?

[AbhigyanModi]

The executable is not supposed to interfere to interfere with any antivirus. Can you elaborate on the problem you are seeing?

[PeterFacey]

During the update of Acrobat/Acrobat Reader yesterday (16th Sept) I had several (about 5) pop-up message from F-Secure AntiVirus saying that this exe was trying to interfere with a target program which was one of the F-Secure programs. Unfortunately, I didn't capture the exact message, but simply told F-Secure to block the program. The update continued normally. F-Secure indicated that it didn't know about AdobeGCClient.exe .

I assume this program is trying to verify if my Acrobat is genuine (GC = genuine check???)?

F-Secure ought to log what it has done but I'm not sure where. I had a look at *.log in C:\Program Data\F-Secure and found this (not terribly helpful):-

TOTAL: 3 matches in 2 files (235 other files without matches are not listed)
2 matches in C:\ProgramData\F-Secure\Logs\ComputerSecurity\FSGUI\flyer.dll.log
266  2014-09-16 20:41:37.974 [11d8.1acc] I: Trying to query Hydra hint on c:\program files (x86)\adobe\acrobat 10.0\acrobat\gc\adobegcclient.exe from hive
278  2014-09-16 20:41:38.001 [11d8.1acc] I: Failed to get Hydra hint on c:\program files (x86)\adobe\acrobat 10.0\acrobat\gc\adobegcclient.exe from hive
1 match in C:\ProgramData\F-Secure\Logs\ComputerSecurity\ULFW\fs_ulfw_plugin.log
548  2014-09-16 20:44:19.481 [09e0.13a0] .W: SendQueryToHips: Long response time from HIPS: 161726 ms (result=0, query was '{ "dir": "out", "pid": 6200, "uid": 0, "snr": 5308, "ip": "36584ba6", "port": 443, "ipver": "v4", "locip": "c0a80002", "locport": 57135, "tprot": 6, "ppath": "\\device\\harddiskvolume2\\program files (x86)\\adobe\\acrobat 10.0\\acrobat\\gc\\adobegcclient.exe", "scan": { "st": "allow" }, "ppath_h": "4abbc41579a77879032674e7964a3c96e2c57e9e", "msgid_hips": "ulfw_ac" }')

If it happens again, perhaps on next Acrobat update, I'll capture more info.

[AbhigyanModi]

Thanks. Some virus scanners warn for any new executable that isn't already in their databases. Hopefully, this should go away by itself. Let us know if you see this again.

Meanwhile, we are testing with FSecure scanner and will work with them if needed.

[raymondh52580010]

I'm having the same problem when starting up my computer on windows 10, but i only had 1 notification ( AdobeGCClient.exe - System Error)

I had never had this problem before and now its starting to get annoying. How do I fix it?

[dave_m_k]

Hi Peter,

Just wanted to follow up on this thread to share some more specific information about the AdobeGCClient.exe file.  The AdobeGCClient.exe is a process that runs as part of the Adobe Software Integrity Service validation testing, which checks for any tampering with Adobe Software program files or improper or invalid license, so your summation was correct.

Thanks,

David

[Enchanting_Coast15A7]

I'm having the same problem when starting up my computer on windows 10, but i only had 1 notification ( AdobeGCClient.exe - System Error)

I had never had this problem before and now its starting to get annoying. How do I fix it?

[JBCM Media Production]

I'm getting the error on boot up (Win 8.1) and when I open Adobe applications

[ncrandyb]

I am also getting this error on boot up.  Very annoying!!  Adobe...please help.