system
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I’ve had a recent experience with something being flagged up as a PUP by Malwarebytes and not Avast even though I have PUP detection enabled. The odd thing about it was it was an update installer for a disc burning program I’ve used for months, CDBurnerXP, and as I do in all cases it was specifically scanned with Avast and Malwarebytes immediately after the download.
No problem reported then and the Quick Scans (highest sensitivity in Avast’s case) ) using both those programs I do as part of my weekly maintenance didn’t show it as being any problem last week post download.
However this week Malwarebytes flags it up as a PUP but Avast doesn’t. It was actually quite difficult tracking down where the PUP was because the Malwarebytes log does not present the full location so I just knew it was in my Downloads folder. Apparently the right mouse context menu option to go to the location does not work in the free edition so I had to scan all the downloads to find the culprit.
Anyway once located I scanned it with Avast and again it flagged up no problem. Malwarebytes continued to regard it as a PUP and since I’d installed the update using it already I let it remove the apparently dodgy installer. I did full system scans with Mawarebytes and then Avast afterwards and everything came up clean.
It got me thinking though as to why this had happened and I had a thought that Malwarebytes after it’s most recent definitions update was, maybe, detecting an OPTIONAL toolbar installer. The CDBurnerXP updater did include the usual unwanted browser installer and homepage change options many ‘free’ good program installers include but, I think, also came with a less common Ask.com toolbar installer option too.
Is that a possible explanation for all those PUP detections jontalk discovered? So is this Malwarebytes being over-sensitive or Avast being under-sensitive.