AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Malwarebytes definitions11/6/2023 ![]() "In the context of this case, we conclude that when a company in the computer security business describes a competitor’s software as 'malicious' and a 'threat' to a customer’s computer, that is more a statement of objective fact than a non-actionable opinion," the appeals court decision reads. The case now heads back to the district court, subject to the appeals court's direction that New York law also needs to be considered alongside the false advertising claim. Enigma appealed again, and the Ninth Circuit last week revived the case, except for Enigma's claim of tortious interference with contractual relations. When a company in the computer security business describes a competitor’s software as 'malicious' and a 'threat' to a customer’s computer, that is more a statement of objective fact than a non-actionable opinionĪt the time, Malwarebytes' outside counsel, Moez Kaba of Hueston Hennigan, celebrated the judgment by noting the district court’s ruling "validates the right of cybersecurity firms to identify potentially unwanted programs and recognizes the rights of users to choose whether or not to enable those programs on their devices."īut Malwarebytes' victory lap was premature. So far, Malwarebytes has been generally winning, and Enigma losing. In 2021, the California district court, having been told by the Ninth Circuit to reconsider Enigma's lawsuit, again dismissed the complaint. Malwarebytes, supported by advocacy groups and other security outfits, asked the Supreme Court to review the case but was denied in 2020. That appellate ruling meant that Malwarebytes may be liable for characterizing Enigma's software as PUPs if it's deemed to be a competitor – a decision that has the potential to discourage security companies from characterizing software as harmful. MalwareBytes replied that IOBits Denial of Theft Unconvincing.But Enigma appealed and the Ninth Circuit in 2019 reversed the district court's decision, creating in the process an anticompetitive animus exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that generally shields online service providers. Update November 15, 2009: Iobit initialy denied the charge from MalwareBytes but their denial seems to have been removed from their website. NOTE: The forum posting is duplicated on the Malwarebytes blog posting: IOBit Steals Malwarebytes Intellectual Property. Sure enough, a search for IObit at, , and came up empty at each site.Īt this point, I wouldn't touch any software from IObit with a ten foot pole. The web page for IObit Security 360 claims the software was "featured" at places that have no information about it at all. The website rating will probably fall shortly.Ī commenter at CNET pointed out something else interesting. WOT, however, does not have a central ruler, their ratings come from their customers, many of whom have started commenting on the ethical issues involving IObit. Web of Trust (WOT) currently rates the IObit website positively. Here's hoping that CNET, Majorgeeks and other software repositories remove IObit Security 360 from their systems. Ironically, they gave Malwarebytes Anti-Malware only 4.5 stars. Over at, CNET editors gave IObit Security 360 version 1.10 five stars out of five. ![]() We are in the process of contacting these vendors." "During the course of our investigation, we uncovered additional evidence that IOBit may have stolen the proprietary databases of other security vendors as well. Kleczynski concludes his forum posting with: You can see this in a screen shot posted by Malwarebytes. Lo and behold, IObit Security 360 also detects it as malware, even using the same phony "Don't." name. ![]() I also scanned it with MBAM and, as shown below, it was flagged it as Don't. I downloaded dummy.exe and scanned it at VirusTotal which gave it a clean bill of health. Within two weeks IOBit was detecting these fake files under almost exactly these fake names."Īs further proof Malwarebytes offers a safe, non-malicious executable program, dummy.exe, that was tweaked to match a signature in their database. We even manufactured fake files to match the fake definitions. This "malware" does not actually exist: we made it up. Again quoting Kleczynski: "The final confirmation of IOBit's theft occurred when we added fake definitions to our database for a fake rogue application. These were not statements we made lightly." "We conducted this investigation thoroughly over a period of weeks until we were 100% sure of everything we wrote above.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |