OCTOBER 2019 MACWORLD 41Malwarebytes. “We don’t believe in
continuing to detect extinct malware,
because that simply causes extended
scan times without any actual benefit to
the customer.”
As Reed told us, this is not a common
approach in the industry, but Malwarebytes
believes it’s more practical.
Ransomware in 2019 is an odd issue. If
a home user gets infected it is without a
doubt one of the most damaging pieces of
malware to come up against. It’s designed
to encrypt all of your files, and then
demand a ransom (usually in the form of
pseudonymous Bitcoin) to decrypt your
files. To make matters worse, sometimes
the bad guys won’t even decrypt your stuff
after you pay. These days ransomware is a
bigger issue for businesses than people at
home, which is in part why Malwarebytes
felt comfortable pruning certain kinds of it
from its active database.
It’s true that Malwarebytes scans
more quickly than other security suites,
and that likely means faster remediation
for more common threats. But to me that
sounds like something you want in a
secondary defense, not a primary one.
That is my opinion, however, and I’m sure
there are Mac users who would disagree.Malwarebytes failing to detect ransomware.