Ahoy ahoy,

I "installed" the portable version of kontakt the other day for obvious reasons.

The issue is that this particular version of kontakt (or all symlink and portable versions for that matter) try to establish a connection to 93.184.220.20
If you have your daw blocked with your firewall, the host will crash. Or at least, ableton live will crash.
If you have pulled the plug and didn't block anything it appears to work.
You can unblock the daw to have it start up and it will work fine, but if you block it again while having kontakt loaded it will crash instantaneously.
I could not figure out what's behind 93.184.220.20 but kontakt will not work without a connection to your network interface.
So as long as we don't know what's behind this I'd consider those kontakt versions at least spyware if not malware.

Maybe all respective releases should be considered nukes and thus deleted from audioz?

 

do you mean that if I disable wifi or ethernet or internet cards, Kontakt 5.7.1 Portable will not load?

 

Mine [5.7.0 portable] does no such thing; no 93.184.220.20 in logs/netstat.

 

A quick whois returns this:


IP Information for 93.184.220.20
Quick Stats
IP Location United States United States Ashburn Edgecast Netblk
ASN United States AS15133 EDGECAST - MCI Communications Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business, US (registered Mar 19, 2007)
Whois Server whois.ripe.net
IP Address 93.184.220.20
Reverse IP 41 websites use this address.
% Abuse contact for '93.184.220.0 - 93.184.223.255' is ''

inetnum: 93.184.220.0 - 93.184.223.255
netname: EDGECAST-NETBLK-03
descr: NETBLK-03-EU-93-184-220-0-22
country: EU
admin-c: DS7892-RIPE
tech-c: DS7892-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: MNT-EDGECAST
created: 2012-06-22T21:57:14Z
last-modified: 2012-06-22T21:57:14Z
source: RIPE
notify:

person: Derrick Sawyer
address: 13031 W Jefferson Blvd #900, Los Angeles, CA 90094
phone: +18773343236
nic-hdl: DS7892-RIPE
created: 2010-08-25T18:44:19Z
last-modified: 2017-03-03T09:06:18Z
source: RIPE
mnt-by: MNT-EDGECAST

 

no, disabling your network interface should work.

Do you have blocked the host (DAW) with your firewall?

Yes, I have done a whois query as well. Derrick Sawyer appears to be a verizon sales rep so that's a dead end.

 

Nope.

 

I block ableton and use kontakt portable no issue here whatsoever

 

According to this site, that IP belongs to NI
https://www.robtex.com/dns-lookup/configuration.native-instruments.com

Blocking all network activity will crash Kontakt because it often uses 127.0.0.1 to communicate with itself.

 

If this is true, it is really dumb !!!

 

It is.
That's why it'll work without being connected to internet but not if you block everything, including that

 

Is it only with "Kontakt 5.7.1 Portable"
If it applies to all version, which version did it strarted doing this ?
( i use Kontakt 5.6.5 R2R + my firewall blocks ableton and kontakt to access Internet = never had any issue )

 

5.7.1 symlink here and no crashes with Cubase and Kontakt blocked with firewall or disabled network or VPN or whatever.

 

Interesting... what portable version do you have installed fraifikmushi?
My DAWs never see the Internet but it doesn't hurt to know such things.

 

Interesting, thanks! The thing is that the latest r2r release connects to that ip adress as well so I really don't know wether it's safe or not.
Common sense would say that if cracked software dials home despite the crack it's a nuke.
Can anyone else verify this behaviour?

 

I will tell you what I found. It loaded, and worked fine until I removed the install folder. It needs the original folder that it is installed from (maybe I mean loaded, not installed)to be kept on the system. Maybe you are somehow blocking access to this original install folder? I have had a problem with the levels dropping way down as I am using it for some reason. It is fine until I begin working with MIDI and then boom the levels drop for some odd reason. I don't have this problem with non-portable.

 

Hm, I don't think it's a host instrusion issue, it really is about network security...

 

If you block outgoing traffic correctly then this will not affect communication to local (i.e. host-only) sockets.
Otherwise Kontakt wouldn't run without internet, and nobody wants that.

 

Last edited: Jan 4, 2018

fraifikmushi, can you in any way confirm that for example AUDiTOR's release is not doing that? My assumption is that even the legal Kontakt does it and all cracked versions, too.

It's really interesting. I have a certain masochist interest in problems [all kinds]... that's why I'm a "computer guy", I suppose.

 

Sorry, that was an error, I meant the auditor release.
I'm sure the legal Kontakt does it! One of the main functionalities of a crack is to prevent such behaviour :/

 

That release from Auditor also asked me to allow permission of my firewall to run which is also the first time that I suddenly got this with all the Kontakt versions I have ever used. Not sure why this version is suddenly asking for that? But yeah there is probably a logical reason for it?

@fraifikmushi

How did you found out what ip adress your Kontakt is using? Might be interesting for me to see it aswell.