Adobe Creative Cloud glitch deletes users' data

Adobe Creative Cloud users have been hit by a serious flaw in the company's latest update, which arbitrarily deletes the first directory from their machine's root directory - even if it has nothing to do with Adobe.

An update released on the 10th of February to bring its Creative Cloud software suite to version 3.5.0.206 has been found to cause data loss. In Adobe's own words, 'in some scenarios the application may incorrectly remove files with user writeable permissions from the system root directory.' Those files, it transpires, are actually directories - in particular, the first directory listed when the root directory of the operating system's main drive is listed alphabetically.

The problem came to light when backup company Backblaze began receiving error reports from its users warning that the backup volume information had gone missing. This information is stored in a directory labelled .bzvol - for many users, the first directory listed alphabetically. The company was able to identify Creative Cloud as the commonality between cases, and rolled out its own temporary workaround in the form of a 'sacrificial' folder, empty of data, which would sit higher in the list. A full write-up of the company's investigations is available on the official blog.

Adobe, for its part, confirmed the flaw as affecting users of its Creative Cloud software on Apple's OS X platform, and pulled the update. A new update, released late last night, resolves the problem; it will not, however, restore files deleted as a result of the glitch, leaving anyone who did not have a backup for data deleted by the update out of luck and out of data.