MB Anti-Malware Free, PDF and Office files

[ThomasB]

Hello,

 

I read an old forum post (2009) saying: "We do not focus so much on vulnerabilities in third-party software, such as Adobe Acrobat, like the PDF exploits you mentioned. That is something that antivirus vendors are usually quite good at. However, we certainly do detect the payloads and remote code execution that such exploits lead to."

 

Is this still true, or has MalwareBytes Anti-Malware changed meanwhile?

 

I am interested to know about the free version of MalwareBytes Anti-Malware.

Is MalwareBytes Anti-Malware Free capable of detecting malicious code inside PDF and Microsoft Office files, just by scanning them (before opening the files with the reader like Adobe Reader, Microsoft Office, etc.).

 

Thanks.

[Aura]

Hi ThomasB

Is this still true, or has MalwareBytes Anti-Malware changed meanwhile?

This is still true. Malwarebytes still doesn't targets documents (like PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, etc.) but will detect and remove the payload or settings added/modified by these exploits. For more information about this, see David H. Lipman (Expert) post below.

https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?/topic/161986-mbam-premium-v2-what-does-it-not-do/

This being said, no Malwarebytes will not be able to detect malicious code inside PDF or Microsoft Office documents, because it doesn't scan them. If you want to protect yourself against exploits that are usually contained in malicious version of these documents, I suggest you to take a look at Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit Premium, which is designed to protect your system against exploits and 0-days, like the ones used in these documents.

https://www.malwarebytes.org/antiexploit/premium/

This being said, I'm sure that David or another Expert (even maybe a Malwarebytes Employee!) will answer you shortly in more details.

[David H. Lipman]

Thanx Aura.
 
Besides the reply I posted that that Aura linked to, here is some more information.
 
Malwarebytes' Anti-Exploit ( MBAE ) is designed to deal with many of the types of malware associated with scripts, documents and media files where MBAE will protect the computer against Exploitation attempts whether they were exploits of software vulnerabilities or taking advantage of an application in an unusual way and works at an "action level" and not a "file level" like MBAM. MBAE provides protection of applications that are commonly  known to be associated with and normally used by the file type.

Reference:  MBAE FAQ