Paranoid_Friendoid

Thanks for the quick response Porthos! I'm glad you affirmed that this isn't evidence of malware, just evidence of malwarebytes browser guard blocking something. I suppose this is no evidence of my system being infected then, right

Hello everyone, recently I've merely looked at images on google for proper exercise form and upon clicking one image from "powerliftingtechnique.com" (I didn't visit the website itself), the malwarebytes browser guard extension mentioned blocking a malware. See the attachment below for a screenshot. Did the extension notice a malware on the "powerliftingtechnique.com"-website or was it a malware on my PC that might have brought forth this threat notice? I haven't downloaded anything sketchy recently so I doubt I have malware. Is this behavior normal from the malwarebytes browser guard extension? Thank you in advance for your support!

Okay, thank you very much for the insight and you can mark this thread as closed :)

I see! So it's safe and part of Malwarebytes, right? So MB puts files in that password protected folder during the scan so they're isolated and can't interact with other files?

Hello everyone, I've performed a scan with Bitdefender to get a second opinion. The scan claimed there are password-protected files inside the Malwarebytes folder. What are these zip files and are they safe? I'd appreciate your insight and wish you a great weekend!

Hello! This could maybe belong to a microsoft forum but I would like your input on it before I start asking somewhere else: Recently, I updated my security info on my microsoft account. It took 30 days to process and that's normal. When the 30 days ended, I got this weird sign in to my account at a time when I didn't log in. Nobody else logged in to my PC at the time and my PC was off but the IP address is correct and the location is slightly off. It also shows the correct browser I usually use. On the attachment I provide, you can see the IP addresses matching with the most recent sign-in which is me. The bottom ones, I don't know about. Microsoft often shows "sign-in" when in fact it's just a recent action done to the account. I assume that it isn't worrisome as the IP address is correct but I'm still not fully convinced if it could be someone having logged in to my account masking his IP address. Is that my schizophrenia talking or is that a legitimate worry? Thanks for your input (and your patience)! :)

I see, yeah, it would have been a shock to me but if you know what you're doing, I can see it just being a hassle

Ohh, I can imagine finding that out would be quite a shock! Good think boot-sector infections are exceedingly rare nowadays, especially with the decline of floppy disks. It's always good to equip yourself with more information 😄

May I ask how you've grown to have such a passion for malware? I think it's fascinating too but it's a bit of a niche thing to develop an interest in, no? Most people just download antimalware software and then stop thinking about it

Sorry, I'm not using the paid version yet. I had a detection on another device a few months ago and it made me wonder if an adware detection could actually be a misclassification and actually be a different type of malware. After reading David's thorough explanation on classification and naming conventions, I assume that it's unlikely malwarebytes missclassified it, as different malware-types are completely different, like how in biology bacteria and virus are completely different agents

Wow, thanks for all the input! While I can't promise to remember all of that, I'm very grateful for all the information you guys have provided! 😄 Interesting learning about the history of the naming conventions for malware. How did you guys actually come to learn all these things? If you're willing to share, what's your background and what did you study?

Thanks for the thorough explanation of the malware classifications, the comparison with plants and infections really illustrated the concept well! So carrying over those concepts of classification to malware, you're essentially saying that it's possible that the sub-type of the detected malware might deviate a bit but malwarebytes would never be as incorrect as to (for example) display something like "adware" where it would in reality be a worm, or any other malware classification, correct? Unrelated to this, would you have any specific book recommendations for someone who wants to expand his horizon on the topic of malware?

Hello, I have another quick question about the accuracy of the scans. If there is a detection such as "adware", can it ever happen that malwarebytes falsely depicts the category of a malware? For example, if a scan comes up with a threat in the category "adware", does it ever happen that it is in fact a worm or something else? How reliable are the listed malware-categories of the listed threats? Thank you for your insight and feel free to tell me if I spam the forum too often!

Will remember to leave it in the future! Yeah I heard it makes up information if it has no info on something. I thought it would be okay to consult it first before spamming the forums here but ít ended up only worsening the situation haha Feel free to mark this thread as closed, as you've already provided very good assistance :)

(This topic is basically done and can be closed but the reason I asked was because I consulted ChatGPT first before posting here and it was the reason I correlated these things. Of course, it's an unreliable source but I thought it would be a good place to start:)