A number of security experts on Friday afternoon, among many others via Twitter and on their blogs, criticized Adobe's position.

"The general rule of thumb is that security patches should be issued for all products still considered in-support," said Rich Mogull, a security analyst at who expressed surprise at Adobe's initial decision. "I recently did some research on this and found no cases where an out-of-support product was issued security fixes..."

But Adobe by the company. According to Mogull, not issuing a patch would be tantamount to "...breaking with industry convention and customer expectations. If the products are really out of support, then that's understandable. But their own site shows them still within an active support window. CS5 is only two years old."

Adobe launched CS5 in mid-April 2010, and CS5.5 in April 2011. Upgrade prices are as follows: Photoshop CS6 Extended, $399; Photoshop, $199; Illustrator, $249, and Flash Professional, $99. CS6 Design & Web Premium, which includes all three affected software packages, costs $375.