After over a year in beta, finally Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit has been out of beta and the stable version has been officially released for Windows systems, its available as a free version and premium version with a price tag a$24.95.
This new security app from Malwarebytes will look for “exploit-like behaviors” in the applications installed on your Windows instead of searching for known software flaws or exploits, this kind of monitoring the behavior of apps is called heuristic analysis.
Heuristic analysi technology has been used over years by malware detectors to efficiently block known exploits as well as unknown exploits aka zero-day threats.
Exploit based malware are specially dangerous, all a user has to do is visit an affected website or open a infected PDF file or an Word doc sent via email.
These type of exploits will go unnoticed through traditional antivirus which works on signature updates, but security tools with behavioral analysis technology can block these exploits.
Malwarebytes has worked with Kafeine ( a French security researcher) for developing the Anti-Exploit feature and now kafeine is actively testing this security tool against many exploit kits available on online black markets, it has reported that this security tool has efficiently detected and blocked these kits.
Actually, a year back Malwarebytes bought ZeroVulnerabilityLabs and renamed and overhauled the company’s ExploitShield software as Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit.
Anti-Exploit is designed to protect your PC from Zero-day exploits, web-based attacks and other threats.Using Anti-Exploit is simple, just download the app (2.5 MB) and once installed, the software will run in the background and can largely be left to its own devices.
You can view information about its activity at any time by right-clicking the System Tray icon and opening the program window.
The interface has four tabs : General, Shields, Logs and Exclusions. General provides an overview and shows the number of currently shielded applications, the number of exploit attempts blocked so far, and the number of files that have been quarantined.
It also displays the version number and lets you disable protection, which can also be toggled on or off via the System Tray icon.
The Shield tab lists the applications the program can protect, including Adobe Reader,Chrome,Firefox,Foxit Reader, Internet Explorer, Java , Microsoft Office (word,Excel,Powerpoint),VLC and Windows Media Player.The full list varies depending on the operating system that Anti-Exploit is running on.
The Logs tab tells you what programs are running and protected.Exclusions doesn’t work in free version, this premium feature will let you add/manage custom shields.
The total size of Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit is just 2.5 MB, because the application doesn’t require frequent updates as it looks for general behaviors instead of known or specific exploits.The application compatible from Windows XP through 8 and 8.1.
The free version will guard Java and four popular browsers : Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera, where as the premium version that costs $24.95 can protect browsers, Java, Flash, Microsoft Office, PDF readers, and media players.
To give it a try you can download the Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit free version and also, if you have luck you can win one of 10 licenses of Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit Premium or T-shirts by entering this Giveaway.