Pirate activation.

[Nazareno]

Hi, I'm looking at the new methods of illegal activation of mbam and would like to suggest that you make a new version of components to fix this problem. Hackers activate mbam with a fake license and then block the entire program with the firewall, thus getting their job done. My suggestion is that mbam realizes that it is blocked by the firewall, through some update, and the license expires. Thank you very much in advance. Best regards.

[exile360]

Greetings,

Actually, I believe that if enough time passes without it being able to check in with the license server to validate the license, it will actually deactivate (I believe it warns the user that this is going to happen and gives them a certain number of days before it reverts to free mode).  I will submit this request to the team just to make certain though.

[Nazareno]

The dark side guys are always looking for a way to illegally activate the program. Thank you very much. Best regards.

[exile360]

Yep, they know.  That's one of the reasons they've made so many improvements to the license/subscription activation process as well as changing things to break the most common methods of pirating the software.

[Amaroq_Starwind]

I'm incredibly familiar with how easy piracy of MBAM used to be. I'm actually surprised that Malwarebytes doesn't have a visible "Aaaargh, I'm a pirate!" mode.

[exile360]

15 minutes ago, Amaroq_Starwind said:

I'm actually surprised that Malwarebytes doesn't have a visible "Aaaargh, I'm a pirate!" mode.

 at one time there actually was an "Aaaarh matey!" type message when a pirated license key was discovered in the product.  It would show up offering the user the opportunity to go legit by purchasing a license at a substantial discount.  It was very lighthearted and quite generous.  That was back when they first implemented many of the license validation changes and discovered how much piracy there was, and they decided rather than leaving all those users without any protection, that it would be better to give them a grace period during which to decide whether or not to accept the amnesty offer and go legit for a fraction of the normal cost of the software, and many of the users took them up on it, with several of them citing the fact that they found the messaging humorous and Malwarebytes' attitude about it (remaining jovial and amicable rather than harsh or trying to intimidate them and taking away their protection completely) as reasons for purchasing.  As I recall, they sold a LOT of copies of the software that way during that amnesty program, meaning a lot of users who were previously pirating the software went legit and got full protection in the process.

I'm really glad that they handled it this way.  Most larger software companies probably wouldn't have handled the situation so gracefully because all they see is the bottom line, and all they tend to think about are marketability and profits.  Showing a sense of humor about your own software being pirated is exactly the kind of thing that makes Malwarebytes stand out as a different software company and makes me proud to support their efforts because they put their heart into their work and it shows.  They actually care about helping and protecting people, not just driving up the price of a stock.  That kind of genuine humanity is missing from most companies these days, at least in my opinion and based on my own experience and observations.

[Amaroq_Starwind]

I'm surprised Malwarebytes doesn't have more little Easter Eggs like that. 🦊

[exile360]

They used to have a "Pac-Man" style game on their homepage when you entered the infamous Konami Code from the old Nintendo days (from games like Contra and Life Force, among many others; all titles published by the game developer Konami) which featured the old Malwarebytes icon as the main character but they took it down, most likely because the rights to Pac-Man belong to Midway.  You can see an example of what the old icon looked like at the top of this page if you aren't familiar with it (it was often referred to as the "Malwarebytes Pac-Man" for obvious reasons).

I don't know if they have any other Easter Eggs these days, but I don't know of any.  I believe there were plans to include some kind of cool Easter Egg in the software at some point, but I don't believe it ever happened, at least not yet.  At this point I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it though, as they obviously have bigger fish to fry these days with all the threats out there to stay on top of and all of their products to maintain so doing stuff like this, while cool, probably isn't the highest priority right now.

I can put in a request for some kind of Easter Egg in the software if you wish though.

[Amaroq_Starwind]

Definitely, I appreciate that!
Perhaps in the future, they could even have a contest on the forum for who can design the best Easter Eggs, and select from their favorites before implementing them.

Somewhere on the forum (I forgot where), I started a thread about different Malwarebytes Goodies that people could grab to show their support for the company, be it little things like screensavers or entire windows themes, to physical merchandise, or even sticker packs for apps like WhatsApp, Telegram and/or Facebook Messenger. I'd totally commission an artist to make a Malwarebytes sticker pack if I had the budget for that.

[exile360]

They used to have all sorts of swag.  T-shirts, stickers, ball caps, coffee mugs, mouse pads, thumb drives etc. but I don't know if they still make any of that stuff any more, as the last of it that I saw had the old company logo on it (the one from Malwarebytes 2.x that looked kinda like Pac-Man like I linked to above).

[Amaroq_Starwind]

If they start selling the thumbdrives again, they could probably be bundled with Malwarebytes utilities on-board, such as installers and licenses. Maybe stick those on a separate, read-only partition that can't be reformatted, and can only be edited by Malwarebytes itself to refresh it with updates.

[exile360]

They actually had something kind of like that at one point, at least for technicians/PC repair shops.  It had a portable build of Malwarebytes for scanning/remediation, scripts to automate the install of Malwarebytes consumer and several other tools like Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit Beta and Chameleon for more difficult to deal with threats.

I think they also sold a USB version of the consumer product at one point but I'm not positive on that one.

[Amaroq_Starwind]

The Techbench USB, I recall seeing information about that recently. It was never made available to consumers, actually, and they have no plans on making it available to consumers AFAIK.

[exile360]

Yeah, the Techbench USB was the one for PC repair shops I mentioned, but I do believe they did have a USB version of the standard Malwarebytes consumer product that included a few additional tools (mostly their free offerings like FileASSASSIN and StartupLite; the same as what was included on the retail CD version at the time).  The consumer USB I'm referring to didn't have a portable build of Malwarebytes or anything like that; I believe it was just a duplicate of the retail disc, just on USB instead of CD.

Edited December 3, 2018 by exile360