IMPORTANT: Web Blocking / RAM Usage

[small]

One possible reason for the vacillating number of pages is that at least one post was a blatant link to an irrelevant external organisation and was reported as such; shortly after the report, the post was deleted, presumably by a forum administrator.

[Walo]

@dcollinsThousand thanks! Don't have a clue why updates haven't been installed as I've always clicked to install them.

Didn't work thru app so I followed link (without the period) and got an invalid request but noticed the banner at the bottom to save or whatever and ran the file.

I think I'm good. Sincerely appreciate your speedy reply and help.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2018 by Walo
add dcollins

[dcollins]

Looking good, thanks for the follow up!

[TheMSBob]

4 hours ago, Lunatic59 said:

Not to be flip about this as it affected me as well, although not to the extent as some, but how would the affected customers even get the email if their PC's were borked? Many don't have redundant systems or check email on other devices. Plus, MWB would only know the IP gateways for the affected users, how would they know who to send the email to?

 

And think of what would happen if they did send out a mass email ... many scared consumers and possibly business would turn off their protection and expose themselves to the real bad guys ... who would love to have even a few hours of unprotected access to millions of systems.

A suggestion, for corporate users, they need to collect and use out-of-band alternate email addresses for broadcast messaging. 

[paulds]

MB-Clean said to post the results log - do I post here?  - most of it says "trying to  delete" or "cannot find" or "cannot delete" & other unfavorables

[rhabdomantist]

Anyone watching Tech-Vets?

Secure Video

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by rhabdomantist

[jeebus]

when the meltdown happened i uninstalled and then reinstalled MB Premium.  everything has worked fine, BUT  a few times a day i'm getting a pop-up banner saying "Version Update Available. A new and improved version of malwarebytes is available. get the new version free of charge. download and install."   how do i stop this pop from happening?  my system is fully updated, and i'm under the impression the pop up is in regard to the free version.

[Walo]

2 hours ago, jeebus said:

when the meltdown happened i uninstalled and then reinstalled MB Premium.  everything has worked fine, BUT  a few times a day i'm getting a pop-up banner saying "Version Update Available. A new and improved version of malwarebytes is available. get the new version free of charge. download and install."   how do i stop this pop from happening?  my system is fully updated, and i'm under the impression the pop up is in regard to the free version.

@jeebusSounds like same problem I had. See this page at top.I had an older version, quirky in that I'd click to install upgrades and they evidently did not upgrade. I forced the upgrade using instructions @dcollins sent to me earlier today. I thought it strange that this notice started popping up just after this latest issue. 

10 hours ago, dcollins said:

@Walo you're on a pretty old version. I would recommend installing the latest update as it contains quite a few fixes. You can do this by clicking Check for Application Updates under Settings -> Application or by downloading the latest installer from https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/mb3. Both upgrade methods will have the latest database with the fix in it.

 

[bobpitman]

The fallout from this problem virtually bricked my pc.
It triggered a corruption in Windows registry that left me stuggling to get a working computer for 3 days. It caused entries that referenced all my Windows apps to be corrupted leaving Win10 bootable but non-funvtional, no start menu, no mail, no edge, no spotify, no control panel access to recovery, I couldnt do backups as the corruption prevented it, I couldnt run DOS utilities as they just got to 11% repair and then got no further for up to 6 hours, safe mode couldnt resolve the corruption...
3 days and its still causing problems. My Action centre has lost all its settings so no notifications comong up and as far as I can tell no way to reinstate the old action centre notifications with trying to uninstall/reinstall apps. Malwarebytes itself has lost its exclusions list. I've lost tranches of emails (not available on my server and I had not included them in my back ups), personal sign in data in apps gone. Trying to delete files wouldnt work as the file or folder was corrupt and slowly the whole registry died... eventually when the recycle bin wouldnt empty (corrupted data) it triggered some form of automated windows self repair which seemed to fix the OS.

It was only this morning (Wednesday 31) when Malware bytes started blocking all web access becasue it couldnt access the blocked site server and caused yet another reboot/repair sequence  that I found your note about Saturdays disaster.

Im not a business customer but your error has cost me days of headaches and trying to apply fixes and I am still left with less than 1 year old installation that is only half working and I'm just waiting for the next unresolved problem to become apparent.
Ive used malwarebytes for a long time but only recently become a premium customer and now I am far from a happy Customer

[ebergerly]

I, like everyone else on this planet, have a smartphone. And that smartphone receives my email. And it is unaffected by MB viruses on my home network. And its the way I luckily found out about this on Saturday while my computers were borked and disconnected from the internet. Thats why a simple email, exactly like what they sent to associates and resellers on Saturday, should have included us.

[jeebus]

8 hours ago, Walo said:

@jeebusSounds like same problem I had. See this page at top.I had an older version, quirky in that I'd click to install upgrades and they evidently did not upgrade. I forced the upgrade using instructions @dcollins sent to me earlier today. I thought it strange that this notice started popping up just after this latest issue. 

 

Walo, thanks for the reply.  today i noticed when i opened MB, in the control panel it said "version update available."  in previous days it did not say that... it was only the pop up message that was saying "version update available."  so i downloaded the latest version from the control panel and hopefully i will no longer get the pop up.

 

[small]

2 hours ago, ebergerly said:

I, like everyone else on this planet, have a smartphone.

And I, like many other people on this planet, do not.  Neither statement adds anything worthwhile to the debate as to whether this issue was handled responsibly by MWB.  I continue to believe that it was -- you may choose to differ.

[Davidtoo]

Yep Bob...my computer non-recoverable.  I have a hybrid SDS drive that was destroyed.  My tech guy surmizes  the drive was trashed because it was in overdrive all weekend after the malwarebytes flaw was automatically installed....he tells me that SDS drives are wonderful for speed but they are not as durable as older hard drives and more subject to wearing out...My drive was about nine months old...we tried to recover  but the corruption ran too deep...even after cloning over to a newer hard drive...so he is reinstalling the operating system from scratch, will redo a profile, copy over the data, I will have to reinstall all of my programs, etc.  Not a fun time when I have so many deadlines at my office.  Right now, I am working off of my Server.

I will say one thing....I have a few employees in my office but they are unaffected because only my computer had malwarebytes Premium.  I figured kaspersky was good enough for everybody else with a free malwarebytes scan from time to time.  Grateful for that....if my entire business had been closed down because of this....I would already have a lawsuit filed against Malwarebytes.

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Davidtoo

[bobpitman]

51 minutes ago, Davidtoo said:

Yep Bob...my computer non-recoverable.  I have a hybrid SDS drive that was destroyed.  My tech guy surmizes  the drive was trashed because it was in overdrive all weekend after the malwarebytes flaw was automatically installed....he tells me that SDS drives are wonderful for speed but they are not as durable as older hard drives and more subject to wearing out...My drive was about nine months old...we tried to recover  but the corruption ran too deep...even after cloning over to a newer hard drive...so he is reinstalling the operating system from scratch, will redo a profile, copy over the data, I will have to reinstall all of my programs, etc.  Not a fun time when I have so many deadlines at my office.  Right now, I am working off of my Server.

I will say one thing....I have a few employees in my office but they are unaffected because only my computer had malwarebytes Premium.  I figured kaspersky was good enough for everybody else with a free malwarebytes scan from time to time.  Grateful for that....if my entire business had been closed down because of this....I would already have a lawsuit filed against Malwarebytes.

 

 

 

I'm not litigious by nature Davidtoo but this has just about cost me my PC... my machine is less than a year old and I apparently have the option of reinstalling a fresh Win10 and that will solve the problem but then leave me with the issue of a years worth of personalisation and personal data to reinstall/reaccess.
When I saw 100% of 16Gb RAM and 100% of disc access being used my first thought was that my drive was being ransomed by being encrypted... but to find out that it was Malwarebytes 3 days after the event is unpardonable.

I'm desperate enough for help that I've asked microsoft as trying to locate and fix stuff in Win10 is like looking under the bonnet of a modern car.... needs a big sign "there are no user servicable parts inside".
In this instance I think more than an apology is owed by the company. I feel your pain. if this has been 6 months ago when I was running my own business it would have been catastrophic (and yes I do back ups but not every day and last time something this bad happened I went back to a previous system restore point it then led to corrupt versions of programs that had since been updated and 3 - now 4 - days trying to put right what I didnt know MBAM had done its a long period and updates have been done).

Edited January 31, 2018 by bobpitman

[marge201]

4 hours ago, ebergerly said:

I, like everyone else on this planet, have a smartphone. And that smartphone receives my email. And it is unaffected by MB viruses on my home network. And its the way I luckily found out about this on Saturday while my computers were borked and disconnected from the internet. Thats why a simple email, exactly like what they sent to associates and resellers on Saturday, should have included us.

You said that you found out about this mess on Saturday on your phone (an email, I thought, but maybe not) and then you say that a simple email should have included us, the users.  So did you find out about this Saturday?  I found out late Sunday night when I turned the computer on and saw that it's fine but not until Monday about the MWB problem.    How can MWB not have sent an email to users on Saturday??!!!

[dcollins]

It's very strange to hear about the hard drive issues. The main hard drive activity that this would've caused is for lots of Web Protection reports to show up in %ProgramData%\Malwarebytes\mbamservice\MwacDetections. But this happens normally anytime there is a block. The root symptom of this issue is that it used up too much RAM, which could have also triggered the pagefile to swap in an out, but Windows already does this at a pretty consistent clip as well. If anyone has some logs around the corruption or hard drive tests, I'd be curious to see them (you can message me directly if you'd like).

[marge201]

1 hour ago, small said:

And I, like many other people on this planet, do not.  Neither statement adds anything worthwhile to the debate as to whether this issue was handled responsibly by MWB.  I continue to believe that it was -- you may choose to differ.

I believe the statement adds a very worthwhile comment to this discussion.  While you might not have a phone that receives email, the vast majority of people do, and it's extremely odd that TPTB at MWB chose to not email every user on Saturday.  True, you wouldn't have gotten that email on a phone but you could have been using a spare computer without MWB (like me) and you, too, could possibly have received that email.

[marge201]

2 hours ago, jeebus said:

Walo, thanks for the reply.  today i noticed when i opened MB, in the control panel it said "version update available."  in previous days it did not say that... it was only the pop up message that was saying "version update available."  so i downloaded the latest version from the control panel and hopefully i will no longer get the pop up.

 

I presume the current version is 3.3.1?   Can someone verify that?   For me, it updated seamlessly without any action on my part.  So my recovery was perfect but I got hit like a ton of bricks by the defective update.

[ebergerly]

18 minutes ago, marge201 said:

You said that you found out about this mess on Saturday on your phone (an email, I thought, but maybe not) and then you say that a simple email should have included us, the users.  So did you find out about this Saturday?  I found out late Sunday night when I turned the computer on and saw that it's fine but not until Monday about the MWB problem.    How can MWB not have sent an email to users on Saturday??!!!

While my computers were off I grabbed my phone because I luckily noticed they had malwarebytes service taking the entire memory (Task Manager told me). So I used my phone to jump on the web and search malwarebytes service, and luckily I clicked on the link to this thread.

[Davidtoo]

Dcollins... I would like to send you logs, but the computer is with my Tech, and not sure I could have gotten it to spit out any logs anyway....At the end, I couldn't even boot up except in Safe mode.

I can't state unequivocally the malwarebytes flaw caused the hard disk issues, but awfully coincidental that computer worked great when I signed out Friday and no longer worked due to all of the corruption when I signed in Monday morning.  HD sentinel said lots of bad sectors on the computer....already there or not I can't state for sure...but regardless, the corruption is requiring reinstallation of the operating system... the profile was corrupted and could not be restored, even restore points were gone.  Since my computer is custom built, there is no recovery disk and regardless, I don't have the technical expertise to create a profile and reconnect to the Server......so I have no choice but to go with a tech.

[marge201]

25 minutes ago, ebergerly said:

While my computers were off I grabbed my phone because I luckily noticed they had malwarebytes service taking the entire memory (Task Manager told me). So I used my phone to jump on the web and search malwarebytes service, and luckily I clicked on the link to this thread.

 

26 minutes ago, ebergerly said:

While my computers were off I grabbed my phone because I luckily noticed they had malwarebytes service taking the entire memory (Task Manager told me). So I used my phone to jump on the web and search malwarebytes service, and luckily I clicked on the link to this thread.

Oh, very smart of you to have gone in to look at how processes were using memory and then to get right online to research.  It didn't occur to me at all!  And I had total access to the internet on my laptop.   I will certainly remember in the future that any problem could be MWB and remove it immediately.   Right now with my computer working fine, task manager tells me that MWB (MBAMService.exe) is using 246,536 K of memory and mbamtray.exe *32 is using 8,176 K.     I can only imagine what that number was on Saturday.  But the computer was useless and CTRL-ALT-DEL did nothing, so I'd probably not be able to even access Task Manager in the event of another horrible incident like we had on Saturday.

[Porthos]

30 minutes ago, Davidtoo said:

but awfully coincidental that computer worked great when I signed out Friday and no longer worked due to all of the corruption when I signed in Monday morning. 

Was the computer on during this time frame?

Edited January 31, 2018 by Porthos

[Davidtoo]

Yes...i rarely turn the computer off.  Obviously if off, never could have downloaded the update.

[Porthos]

1 hour ago, Davidtoo said:

Yes...i rarely turn the computer off.  Obviously if off, never could have downloaded the update.

Thanks for the confirmation.

I understand everyone's frustration, Not only did I personally have the issue but I stayed busy all day assisting my clients as well. I also assisted users here as time permitted.

I agree with every one about e-mail's "BUT" there will be a large base of users that did not purchase Malwarebytes from the main site. As a reseller I took care of MY customers but Malwarebytes as a company Malwarebytes does not have any of the email address of my 8yrs of clients.

Also none of my clients had any damage to their computers at all. This is a learning experience for Malwarebytes and also the importance of keeping timely image backups.

All said and done, I am sticking with my current security setup and that will always includes Malwarebytes.

 

[Tandor]

Thanks for all the support you've offered here, Porthos, I think you've done a magnificent job.

I wasn't affected by this because I only run manual scans and I too will continue to maintain my current security setup which does not allow MBAM to run continually with automatic updates (or automatic quarantines). I prefer to run manual scans and to check the forum before each one to ensure that there are no current issues. I have another AV program running in the background and this combination seems to work for me.

I accept that MB will not have all the email addresses of their many users. Whether they should have as an integral part of MBAM's installation is something I feel MB should now consider as there is no doubt that a lot of the confusion and heartache in this incident could have been eased with prompt direct notification (preferably to an alternative device which could be part of the recommended practice on installation). It's not so much that people didn't know about this forum, or even that there was apparently no mention of the issue on the main website, rather it's that ordinary lay users would have had no reason to know or even suspect that the cause of their computer misbehaving was in any way connected with MBAM.

I'm sure there are a lot of lessons to be learnt from this episode, by both MB and its customers, whether the latter were directly affected by it or not. That in itself will be a positive outcome, even if the company and some users will end up having paid a significant price in getting there.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Tandor