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Bug: MBAE and Outlook 2019


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Dear Malwarebytes,

I would like to report a bug between MBAE and MS Outlook 2019. Whenever Outlook 2019 is launched we would received the message "Internet Explorer (and add-ons) is now protected by Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit for Business". Please see screenshot.

That doesn't look right because it is Outlook 2019 and not Internet Explorer.

Thanks.

Outlook 2019.jpg

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Hi REGIT,

That may be a notification as we inject our shield into Internet Explorer.

I'm not certain with Outlook 2019 but many other windows programs will employ pieces of Internet Explorer that may run in the background.

Do we also have any kind of outlook plugin in IE as well?

It may be normal functionality if we are not experiencing any blocks or other symptoms of issues?

 

Many Thanks,

Edited by KDawg
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 Dear KDawg,

We never got this message when we were still on MS Outlook 2016 and MS Outlook 2010. It only started happening when on MS Outlook 2019.

We haven't encountered any bad issues yet except for the wrong notification. Nevertheless it is still considered a bug.

Thanks.

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  • Staff

Thanks Will take a look at it, Can you please follow the below instructions and post some logs ? Thanks.

ZIP the entire contents (ALL the files, not just .LOG) of the MBAE user data directory and attach them to your post. The directory is hidden by default so you might have to click on "View -> Hidden items" in Explorer to see it. If you are replying to someone else's post, you can click the "More reply options" button at the end of the page to get the file attachment options. You can find the logs in the following locations:

  1. Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8: C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit
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I don't know if this is related or not, but thought it might be worth mentioning that this may be occurring if Outlook is launching any iexplore.exe (Internet Explorer) processes silently in the background when Outlook starts up.  A similar issue has been reported with some previous versions of Outlook here as well as here.

If Outlook 2019 is doing something similar for some reason, that would explain the notifications from MBAE.

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You're welcome, I'm glad I could help solve the mystery :)

It looks like MS added it for some reason, likely to render the content of emails and/or to do some kind of caching or prefetching for any embedded links/web based content messages might contain.  Only Microsoft knows for certain though of course, but at least now we understand why these notifications are showing up from Malwarebytes whenever you launch Outlook since it is configured to shield any IE process, even if it isn't running in a window that is visible to the user.

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3 minutes ago, REGITDept said:

Thank you exile360.

I'm hoping they will get this fixed soon.

You're welcome :)

I suppose whether or not it gets fixed depends entirely on whether or not Microsoft actually considers it to be a bug or not, as they may very well be doing this deliberately for some purpose (like rendering or caching content as I mentioned).  If that turns out to be the case then Malwarebytes is doing what it is supposed to in shielding every IE process that runs on the system against exploits (something particularly important should anyone attempt to launch an exploit attack through the rendering of javascript or any other active content that might use those hidden instances of IE that run whenever Outlook launches).

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exile360,

I noticed that Outlook created 2 I.E. processes and when you closed Outlook, the processes are still there. When you launch Outlook again it will create another 2 processes. You can just kept adding more to the list as long as you close and open Outlook. Seems buggy to me.

Thanks.

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