Why does IntelliJ want to accept incoming network connections?

Question

➠ What feature in IntelliJ is acting as a server to accept incoming connections?

When first running IntelliJ 2017.1.1 I get a dialog box asking permission for incomin

Answer 1

as doing so is a serious security risk.

It isn't, unless you don't trust the specific product. And if you don't trust a product, why are you using it at all?

IntelliJ needs to check its license once in a while, connect to update servers, maven repositories, plugin repositories, external application servers you may want to connect to, ditto with database servers.

Netbeans needs the same, you no doubt just forgot you gave it permission at some point, or it uses an external JVM that you gave permission at some point.