I have two licence keys purchased through Malwarebytes, although one doesn't show on my account and I gave up with the official support as it wasn't that helpful. On to my question, I have looked for an answer by reading the two help articles about third-party sellers as well as searched the forum. I have a simple question, or possibly two questions that I hope the community/staff can answer:
Download https://vlyyg.com/2A3j5T
Q3: If a licence key shows as activated on Malwarebytes, but does not activate in the Subscriptions section in my Dashboard, does this mean it is pirated, or is this the standard procedure for third-party vendors?
Again, I have read documentation but it's confusing and some of it conflicts with points made by forum staff. G2A has a reputation as being shady, but I have used it four times for Steam purchases over the last six years without an issue.
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I can answer at least a couple of your questions. First, yes, third party vendors for consumer licenses for Malwarebytes do exist, both through reseller programs as well as affiliate programs. Second, no, to my knowledge there are no current or "new" lifetime licenses available for Malwarebytes 3 as Malwarebytes has been on a purely subscription based licensing model for more than 2 years, however existing lifetime licenses from the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.x days will be honored so that existing lifetime license users may keep the lifetime protection and updates that they were promised when they purchased their lifetime licenses years ago.
Generally speaking, most if not all of the supposed lifetime licenses being offered online are fake and have been either stolen or were generated using a keygen (key generator) and are liable to end up being blacklisted as pirated keys (this is why they are all always in the old ID and Key format of the Malwarebytes 1.x license keys rather than the newer single string license key format of modern Malwarebytes licenses) so I would strongly advise against purchasing any Malwarebytes licenses from anyone claiming to have lifetime licenses for sale unless they are willing to produce a sealed, boxed retail copy of the past Malwarebytes Anti-Malware version which contains the lifetime license key, as those should be the only ones still in circulation assuming anyone still has any left. As for validation, the only ones who would have access to the licensing system to check would be members of Malwarebytes Support and Malwarebytes Sales so you probably would need to contact them directly if you wish to attempt to determine whether the keys you have are valid. They may be reached via the options found on this page.
Hopefully @exile360 answered your questions, let us know if you have any more. To tack on to what he said, G2A is not an authorized reseller and we have had a lot of issues with their licenses being re-sold and causing issues for customers months or even years after the initial purchase. When this happens, we unfortunately don't have a good solution other than directing you back to G2A to have the issue resolved on their end.
My laptop has been freezing up a lot lately and after trying everything I could think of, I downloaded the free version of malwarebytes anti-malware. I ran a scan and its detected 25 registry keys and a bunch of files and folders. The files and folders I'm not worried about, but is it safe to remove all those registry key items without it messing up my laptop? I've attached screenshots of the list of "malicious software" malwarebytes has detected.
[*]Click Scan[*]Wait for the scan to finish[*]If any threats were found, click the 'List of found threats' , then click Export to text file.... [*]Save it to your desktop, then please copy and paste that log as a reply to this topic.
[*]Up to date Software
Keep your Windows and your third party software up to date. The easiest way to get infected is an outdated windows, followed by: browser(s) (including add-ons and plug-ins), Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader, Java Runtime Environment, your antivirus program and so on. These links may help you to check:
[*]Backup
Hardware issues, malware, fire, lightning strike: There is a long list of different ways to loose all your data. Back up your files regularly. Use the windows internal backup function or a third party tool and save your data onto an external hard drive, cloud storage, optical media like CDs or DVDs or (if available) a professional network backup system.[*]Behaviour
The commonest error when using a computer is "error 80" - what means that the error is located about 80cm in front of the monitor. This is a common joke between IT support technicians but it shows that all the safety mechanisms wont help if you arent careful enough.
I have a machine that is obviously infected, and when I ran MalwareBytes it told me that it found some "malicious" registry keys (surprisingly enough these contained file path to currently non-existent javascript files). But, that's it. Full scan did not uncover any malicious files, or malicious hidden processes in memory. Like, maybe the (hidden?) process that for whatever reason periodically injects keystrokes (hotkeys?) into whatever currently open window.
How does this jive with people's experience with MalwareBytes? Does it usually find registry key symptoms of an infection but nothing else? Or is it a common thing to have no infection but some malicious registry keys in place anyway?
It might be the case that another program (like your antivirus, CCleaner, or some other anti-malware app you've used) already deleted the files but left the Registry keys behind. It might also be the case that the malware relocated itself one or more times while trying to evade detection, or created decoy registry keys.
I've had good luck with MalwareBytes; it has detected and removed a lot of malware that other antivirus and anti-malware apps have failed to detect or remove. Every time someone I know gets tricked into installing one of those socially-engineered malware apps, like Microsoft Antivirus [insert year], MalwareBytes has had no problem removing it. That said, I don't trust any single program to catch everything. When someone gives me an infected computer, I usually run MalwareBytes, Spybot S&D or Ad-Aware, and Microsoft Security Essentials.
If you're still suspicious of an infection after running several detection and removal programs, BleepingComputer has some very helpful resources for identifying and removing malware, including instructions on how to use HijackThis to identify suspicious activity on your computer.
As research concluded, the original author of Petya, Janus, was not involved in the latest attacks on Ukraine. His original malware was pirated and extended by an unknown actor (read more here). As a result of the recent events, Janus probably decided to shut down the Petya project. Similarly to the authors of TeslaCrypt, he released his private key, allowing all the victims of the previous Petya attacks, to get their files back.
This key cannot help in case of EternalPetya, since, in this particular case, the Salsa keys are not encrypted with Janus' public key, but, instead of this, erased and lost forever (read more). It can only help the people who were attacked by Petya/Goldeneye in the past.
The error in the second version - a.k.a. Green Petya, revealed by me, was not as severe. Yet, it allowed for writing a bruforcer. Thanks to the GPU-based solution implemented by procrash, the process of cracking the Salsa key has been sped up to 3 days.
This was a guest post written by Hasherezade, an independent researcher and programmer with a strong interest in InfoSec. She loves going in details about malware and sharing threat information with the community. Check her out on Twitter @hasherezade and her personal blog:
A lot of people ask me about the best anti-virus programs out there. A consumer has so many choices these days it's hard to tell what's good and what's rubbish. From AVG to Panda, McAfee to Norton, the computer stores are brimming with candy colored boxes luring in unsuspecting customers. Obviously the best anti-virus is common sense. Don't download the .exe file attached to that weird e-mail in your spam folder. Don't crack/steal software using key generators from Russia. Easy stuff people, c'mon.
But as far as actual programs, the two I recommend are Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. Windows Defender is a program that comes for free on newer Windows computers and is a free download for older Windows machines. If you don't have it (and have a legal copy of Windows 7 or up), download Windows Defender here, it's free! Do it now.
But as for paid programs, I always recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. Why? It's powerful, it's fast and it stays out of the darn way. The one thing I hate more than viruses are bloated slow anti-virus programs that slow down your computer more than the damn virus! I'm lookin' at you Norton!! But Malwarebytes is super slick. And now they're trying to make it even better with version 2.0. They are now shipping with built in and improved "Anti-Rootkit and Chameleon self-protection technologies" that they have been working for a year now. Most importantly, the detection and removal engine was significantly improved. It was already awesome, now it's going to be even sweeter. What's more is that they are giving the whole thing a much needed facelift.
They mention that this is beta and is not necessarily stable, but it's still worth a look. It's not 100% certain if the beta keys will continue to work after the beta. But they do mention that, although they are changing to a yearly subscription model, they will be honoring all the lifetime keys they have ever given away as well as giving out more lifetime keys. So if these beta keys expire and you see a good deal on a lifetime key, snatch it up. Trust me, this program is worth it!
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