Adobe AIR app fails to launch due to corrupted .heu file invalidating specific .swz in AssetCache

[Haissamx]

Environment:

Adobe AIR application
Windows 10/11
Affects managed and non-managed machines
Reproducible across most users simultaneously

Our Adobe AIR application suddenly stopped launching for a large number of users simultaneously. The issue affected users on both old and new versions of our application, and both inside and outside our corporate network, ruling out network/group policy as the cause.

Root Cause (Investigated):

The issue is located in:
C:\Users[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Flash Player\AssetCache[folder]\

A specific .swz file (8F903698240FE799F61EEDA8595181137B996156.swz) has a corresponding .heu file that appears to get corrupted/modified on affected machines. AIR fails validation at launch and exits.

Workaround:
Deleting either the specific .swz file or the entire Flash Player folder forces AIR to regenerate the cache on next launch

What could be the problem? why on specific date? for instance on my machine it didn't stop working!

[ajwfrost]

This is an RSL signature error caused by Adobe's code signing certificate expiring.. happens every 10 years.
See e.g. https://community.adobe.com/questions-640/error-2046-734511

The SWZ files that are for Flex 4.5.0.20967 had a code-signing certificate that expired after 25th Feb 2026. Hence this issue.
But if you delete them from the local cache, the runtime will download them again from the Adobe servers, and Adobe had already updated those files (new date is 6th August 2035).

I have no idea why the runtime doesn't work this out and delete the cached files already, that's something we should be able to add into it for the future (different versions of Flex expire at different dates....)

thanks