Question about MBAM Pro and realtime protection

[tomdkat]

Hi!  A friend's laptop was recently was infected with some ransomware virus of some kind. I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened with the system now.  Anyway, she purchased MBAM Pro, per my recommendation, and her system will be the very FIRST system I've encountered that's gotten infected with MBAM Pro installed.  So, I'm curious to find out what happened.

 

Upon first glance, it appears the realtime protection functions have NOT been running since April 1, 2013. I'm not sure if that date has any significance, other than the obvious, but 4/1 is the last entry in the protection.log file which shows the last database update.  Since this is July, I'm thinking the realtime protection of MBAM Pro hasn't been running for all of April, May, June, and the first half of July.  I've re-enabled the realtime protection and I'm scanning the system now.

 

My question:  what would cause the realtime protection of MBAM Pro to be terminated and prevent it from starting when the system boots?  I'm thinking manual disabling of the realtime protection is one possibility.  Is it possible for malware or viruses to disable the realtime protection?

 

Since getting the system in my possession, I haven't seen any signs of infection.

 

Thanks!

 

Peace...

[Firefox]

Well to be honest with you, there are all sorts of things that could have caused this.  It would be hard to track down without looking at logs.  As you mentioned someone inadvertently may have turned the protection off.  Another thing could have been the user clicking ignore on a block or detection that should have not been ignored.  Or simply a new variant of an infection that Malwarebytes did not know about and it could have attached your security software and disabled it or its services. 

 

All that being said, there is no one product out there that is 100% effective so some things may get through from time to time. This is why its important for us to keep an eye on our computers making sure they are up to date and our security running at all times. 

 

Viruses and Malware are changing all the time, the morph into other versions of the same thing and may contain different payloads.  Hackers, and malware writers/programs know that we are out here fighting the good fight so therefore they try to find ways to sneak past our protection efforts in order to infect computers.

If you want help cleaning the infected computer, feel free to follow the instructions below to receive free, one-on-one expert assistance in checking your system and clearing out any infections and correcting any damage done by the malware.

Please see the following pinned topic which has information on how to get help with this: Available Assistance for Possibly Infected Computers

Thank you