How anxious should I be about heeding Apple's advice and trusting Malwarebytes?

3 points

8 years ago

Two simultaneous malware scans, one using Malwarebytes and the other using fs protection for Mac, ran on my MacBook Pro. The programs reported very different sets of detections:

Scan #1: Malwarebytes, in its usual, unnerving ~15-second “comprehensive scan” duration, prompts a false negative: “Congratulations, you are clean!” [disclosure-in-jest: operating on the assumption that it’s referring to my computer being clean, not me personally—though the results of my recent blood test posit the same]

Scan #2: fs protection for Mac detects that I'm about to get Locky'ed out of my computer (reporting 8 VBS/Locky.AF file instances stored locally as email attachments)

Here’s a link to a screenshot of the whole mess: https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/97467p/how_anxious_should_i_be_about_following_apples/?st=JKT19O4H&sh=bf1d0a57

Though I included a couple (terrible) jokes, this is a serious post and the scans were under the stated conditions. Any help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

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