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*Manually* scan files/folders on locally networked drive


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Greetings!

I am the proud owner of a subscription to the super-duper premium version of Malwarebytes (V 3.5.1, current as of this instant date)

My system is a Windows-7 Professional 64 bit version on an HP Envy series EliteBook 8750, maxed out to the gills.

 

Issue:

Malwarebytes Premium 3.5.1 will not allow even a right-click scan of a networked folder.  I suspect that this is a marketing issue to differentiate their Super-Professional For Businesses with Deep Pockets version.

OK, I can accept that.  (I used to run a computer business and was a dealer for a competitors AV, and I know how frustrating it can be to compete with the web-version.)

However, especially in this day-and-age, not providing the ability to scan a file on a networked device is counter-productive as home-based "Personal Cloud" file servers, backup servers, etc. etc. etc., can be a significant security risk.  OK, I can move it to my local machine and scan it there - but why?  I already have access to it on my local share.

Is it possible - or can this be an enhancement request - to allow file/folder scans of networked drives.  It would be acceptable - even desirable - to limit this to manually initiated scans.  (I have over 20T of active files on my server - I have absolutely NO DESIRE to waste a week-or-so scanning all 20+T.)

 

What say ye?

 

Jim "JR"

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Greetings,

Currently there is no version of Malwarebytes (not even the business versions) that is capable of scanning network drives.  This is because of the peculiarities with regards to permissions in Windows and how it handles network attached storage devices.  Normally, for any local folder or drive all that is required to have full read/write/delete access all a process requires is administrative privileges or higher, and since Malwarebytes uses a service that runs with SYSTEM permissions (a built in credential type that provides higher than normal admin permissions for local files/folders) it is normally no problem for Malwarebytes to be able to detect and remove threats from any location within a system.  However, because of the way network storage is handled in Windows, admin permissions and even SYSTEM permissions are not sufficient to have full read/write/delete access to these devices.  This is why Malwarebytes is currently unable to scan these types of devices, and in fact, even in past versions when scanning network devices was allowed, Malwarebytes would actually fail to detect/remove any threats on these types of devices due to this permissions issue, however most users were unaware of it because it would appear to scan the drives just fine.  But the Developers at Malwarebytes were aware of this issue all along and so finally in a recent release the Product team decided to prevent scanning of network drives completely to avoid the false appearance of Malwarebytes being capable of scanning and removing threats from these devices because it was not and never has been accurate (I have first-hand knowledge of this having served as the Product Manager for Malwarebytes for a number of years from the 1.x days through the release of version 2.0 and this issue was always in our backlog of capabilities that Malwarebytes did not have).

The only hypothetical solutions I've seen proposed involved spoofing local user account permissions somehow through the use of user tokens to provide the access necessary to be able to scan and remove threats from network attached devices, however I do believe that any such solution would likely be a "hack" and would not necessarily be the most elegant solution.  I do not know of any other way to provide that capability however because of how permissions work for network attached devices in Windows.

The Malwarebytes staff can fill you in on any further details if there was anything I missed, however this isn't a feature that is being deliberately kept from home users at all and if it were possible via the existing implementation and capabilities of Malwarebytes 3 then this functionality would be provided, however that has never been the case so this recent change of not providing the option was simply the product finally reflecting accurately this limitation that has always been there even since the 1.x days.

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