Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit Standalone information

Malwarebytes 3.0, released a couple of days ago, marks a big jump from the company's previous policy of releasing individual security tools.

Instead of offering Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware as individual downloads and installations, Malwarebytes decided to integrate them all in one product.

The new Malwarebytes 3.0 looks on first glance like an upgrade of Anti-Malware, but there are differences.

Free users get on-demand scan functionality like before, but access to Anti-Exploit or Anti-Ransomware is only granted for paying customers.

The standalone version of Anti-Exploit was offered as a free and paid version, and Anti-Ransomware was only available as a free beta prior to the release.

Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit Standalone information

Malwarebytes did not only release Malwarebytes 3.0 Free and Premium to the public, it did remove links to Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware standalone versions from its website on top of that.

Furthermore, if Malwarebytes 3.0 gets installed on a system, all previous versions of Anti-Malware, Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware get removed in the process.

This is the case even if Malwarebytes 3.0 Free is used (which does not support Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware). If Anti-Exploit

Some users assumed that this was done to entice upgrades to the premium version of Malwarebytes 3.0.

First of all, lets find out if you can run Anti-Exploit standalone next to Malwarebytes 3.0 Free.

While Anti-Exploit -- Free or Premium -- gets removed when you install Malwarebytes 3.0 on your computer, nothing is preventing the installation of the program afterwards.

So, all you need to do is find a copy of the last Anti-Exploit installer, and install the program anew after you installed Malwarebytes 3.0 on your computer.

You find a download link of the latest build on the official Malwarebytes forum.

Please note that the file will be removed eventually.

The future of Anti-Exploit standalone

The Malwarebytes forum is also the place where you get information on the future of a Anti-Exploit standalone version.

The company plans to offer a "perpetual beta" version of Anti-Exploit for free.

Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit standalone(MBAE) will from now on be offered as a perpetual beta product. The standalone MBAE will incorporate new protection techniques for fine-tuning purposes before they are integrated into the Malwarebytes 3.x product.

The idea here is similar to what Microsoft does with its Windows 10 Insider program. Let users test beta versions of a product so that bugs and other issues are discovered before updates make it into the core version.

The new Anti-Exploit standalone beta has not been released yet by Malwarebytes, but the previous version installs just fine for the time being (it was released on December 5, 2016).

Closing Words

There you have it. Anti-Exploit standalone is still a thing, but only in form of a beta that will never become a stable version. No word on Anti-Ransomeware standalone at this point in time. I assume you can install the standalone version as well on a system running Malwarebytes 3.0 if you can get hold of a installer.

Now You: Did you make the upgrade to Malwarebytes 3.0? What's your opinion so far?