Adobe: Pay upgrade price to patch critical bugs

11.05.2012
Adobe has told users of its Creative Suite, which includes the company's premier products like Photoshop and Illustrator, to spend $375 to upgrade if they want patches for eight critical vulnerabilities.

Adobe will not be fixing the flaws in older editions of Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash Professional -- all components of Creative Suite -- even though it has rated the bugs as critical, and addressed the vulnerabilities in Creative Suite 6 (CS6), which launched late last month.

On Tuesday, Adobe issued for eight vulnerabilities in Photoshop 5 and earlier, and Illustrator and Flash Professional 5.5 and earlier. Of the eight bugs, one is in Flash Professional, two are in Photoshop and five in Illustrator.

According to Adobe, the vulnerabilities could be exploited "to take control of the affected system," and affect both Windows and Mac versions of the software. But rather than patch the bugs in the older programs, Adobe told users to upgrade to CS6.

"Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop CS6, which addresses these vulnerabilities," the advisory for the popular image editor stated. "For users who cannot upgrade to Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe recommends users follow security best practices and exercise caution when opening files from unknown or untrusted sources."

Users were furious.