The real reason people want a portable version is to work on public or lab computers. The safer solution is a dedicated laptop (even a refurbished one with 16GB RAM) running a legal copy of Illustrator. The cost of a used laptop plus the $20/month subscription is cheaper than the cost of a ransomware attack from a cracked portable version.
Even if someone cracks an old version, say Adobe Illustrator CS6 (which did have a portable version floating around), it lacks modern features like auto-tracing (Image Trace improvements), variable fonts, and responsive SVG export. Using CS6 today is like using Photoshop 7—it works, but you are professionally obsolete. Absolutely not. Here is a checklist of why: Adobe Illustrator CC Portable
Any you find on torrent sites, file-sharing forums, or YouTube videos is, by definition, an unauthorized, cracked, or repacked version. How Unofficial Portable Versions Are Created (And Why They’re Risky) To create a portable version, crackers and repackers use specialized software like VMware ThinApp, Cameyo, or Enigma Virtual Box. They monitor a clean system, install Illustrator CC, capture every file and registry change, and then wrap those changes into a single executable or launcher. The real reason people want a portable version