New instances of ig.exe constantly needs whitelisting

[Rix643]

I use Malwarebytes with a child-account, having set up Family Safety to only allow programs to run which are whitelisted.

However, the latest version of Malwarebytes keeps creating new versions of ig.exe, like ig-0.exe, ig-1.exe, ig-2.exe, when starting an automated scan. These have to be whitelisted again and again. It is getting quite annoying. Can you stop creating new instances of ig.exe? Does it affect the scan when not allowing the new instances to run? I noticed the scan starts anyway.

Anyone else having this issue?

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[exile360]

Greetings,

I believe IG.exe is a component of the new heuristics in Malwarebytes' scans, and it creates a new instance/version for every scan that runs, likely as a tactic to evade threats that might try to block Malwarebytes from running.  Unfortunately this means that you probably won't be able to easily whitelist it using your current setup.  If possible I would suggest excluding either its location or all executables belonging to the specific vendor (Malwarebytes), however I don't know if that is an option or not as I have never used Windows in that level of a restricted configuration so it might be unavoidable.

I will pass on your experience to the Product team for review and hopefully it is something the Developers can reconcile in a future release.

[Rix643]

7 minutes ago, exile360 said:

Greetings,

I believe IG.exe is a component of the new heuristics in Malwarebytes' scans, and it creates a new instance/version for every scan that runs, likely as a tactic to evade threats that might try to block Malwarebytes from running.  Unfortunately this means that you probably won't be able to easily whitelist it using your current setup.  If possible I would suggest excluding either its location or all executables belonging to the specific vendor (Malwarebytes), however I don't know if that is an option or not as I have never used Windows in that level of a restricted configuration so it might be unavoidable.

I will pass on your experience to the Product team for review and hopefully it is something the Developers can reconcile in a future release.

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I cannot whitelist programs based on their location or vendor. For now I disabled automatic scan and see whether the whitelist request returns or not. If it does I'll keep disabling protecting options until notions stay away, so I'll know which part is responsible.

Hopefully the developers will come with a solution for this, perhaps an option to turn this behavior off.

[exile360]

Yes, and I could also see this potentially becoming a problem with third party AV compatibility as static/persistent exclusions may be required to avoid performance issues and other problems, so I also made a note of that possibility to try and persuade them to reconsider this behavior so hopefully it is something that they can resolve in an upcoming update/release.

[LiquidTension]

Hi @Rix643,

This is behaviour related to the new engine introduced with the Malwarebytes version 4 update. It will occur during both scans and when Malware Protection is enabled. Impeding this behaviour will impact the detection/malware protection capabilities of Malwarebytes scans/Real-Time Protection. However, it won't impact other protection components and when considering the overall protection of the machine offered by Malwarebytes, you will still be more than adequately protected.

Do you have the option to add partial filenames/use wildcards (e.g. ig-*.exe)?

[Rix643]

Hi @LiquidTension,

Thanks for the explanation! No, I don't have the option to add partial filenames/use wildcards. The whitelisting is based on complete path/filename plus file characteristics like creation date et c.  

Switching real time malware protection off seems to do the trick, I haven't seen the whitelisting request for some time, and scans seem to work.

I can live with this for now, but I hope in a future release there will be an option to turn this behavior off. I rather have a weak malware protection layer than none at all.

 

Regards, Rick.

 

[AmbularD]

What concerns me about this is that it's causing a lot of small, frequent write operations, which shortens the life of SSDs.

[Porthos]

1 hour ago, AmbularD said:

What concerns me about this is that it's causing a lot of small, frequent write operations, which shortens the life of SSDs.

SSD's are more resilient than they used to be. The avg SSD will last a lot longer than you think. Those little writes are nothing compared to the normal functions of Windows itself.