The iLok is just a repository of keys and can’t hurt anything by itself. It’s communicated with by code either built into a license protected application or in a “wrapper” added to an otherwise unprotected app. Pace AP (maker of the software and reseller of the iLok) is essentially in a never ending arms race with the warez crowd, and in the past has resorted to some gray-hat, rootkit-like techniques to prevent cracking. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was either some old Pace code going rotten or some sort of crack gone viral/rogue. I used to develop an iLok protected app and am still on their developer mailing list, but note that I haven’t seen any recent alerts from them so it’s entirety possible it’s something else.
Yep, after I posted I realized that if this is really widespread & iLok related, surely someone would have posted on Gearslutz complaining about it by now. So far I can't find any threads about it there.
In my iLok case years ago, it was a problem with the iLok KEXT kernel extension drivers causing my Mac to kernel panic at startup that put me off. That would've been around the Mac OS X 10.5 / 10.6 era.
