IOBit Steals Malwarebytes' Intellectual Property

[reddy]

I don't know where to post this, well I came across this artcle today

Malwarebytes has recently uncovered evidence that a company called IOBit based in China is stealing and incorporating our proprietary database and intellectual property into their software. We know this will sound hard to believe, because it was hard for us to believe at first too. But after an indepth investigation, we became convinced it was true. Here is how we know.

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Link:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/forums/i...0&#entry152610

[Kees]

I removed Iobit Security some time ago from every PC I have, because it continuously tried to call home, even after I had disabled all automatic updating etc. As a follow-up I also removed all Advanced System Care installations. No Iobit for me anymore.

[djwatford]

I really like Advanced System Care so it's a shame if they have actually done this.However surely all security companies are,at least,monitoring what other security companies are doing?

[Kees]

There is difference between monitoring and plain stealing.

[rnbv424140]

MBAM staff worked hard to get a good database and others are profiting from they're hard work.

[safeguy]

Umm, I will be honest here. I'm a fan of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (although i'm not using it now)...seeing that Iobit 'steals' their database makes me slightly pissed off. I don't use Iobit Security 360 (lucky I didn't)...but their Advance SystemCare is not bad...Iobit has just tarnished their own reputation and that's a very sad thing to say.

I'm not going to judge Iobit now...I will have to see Iobit's response to this...what they have to say in defense...

[Kees]

They probably won't say anything now, and just keep a low profile, waiting the indignation to blow out, so they can go on with their practice.

Trust comes on foot, but leaves on horseback.

[reddy]

Here is pathetic explanation from Iobit

As a new face in anti spyawre market, we have many various sources of malware samples from warm-hearted users, computer security fans, and major security groups from all over the world.

We built honeypot, FTP server to collect malware samples all over the world. I took many screenshot to show how we keep samples everyday. We have a large team to collect and analyze lots of samples everyday, if we steal their database, why our staffs are working hard everyday to analyze tuns of samples? We cannot let everyone access the malware and virus samples from our FTP server, but you can check the screenshot I took.

Also as a new face, we have some open submit channel like this page, http://db.iobit.com/deal/sdsubmit/index.php, everyone can submit samples here, write description for the sample submitted. I admit that maybe some of our staff didn't do enough test and put the data into our database, so there is the mistake. I don't know who submitted those wrong sample, but we will try our best to find it out.

Link:http://forums.iobit.com/showthread.php?t=4807

Also check Iobit's,WOT Reputation Scorecard ;
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/iobit.com

[ceyfer]

Imagine how IOBit Security 360 works...

Malwarebytes Forum :

Why would IOBit detect a keygen for our software and refer to it using our database name? We quickly became suspicious. Either the forum post was fraudulent or IOBit was stealing our database.

So we dug further. We accumulated more similar evidence for other detections, and we soon became convinced that this was not a mistake, it was not a coincidence, it was not an isolated event, and it persisted presently in their current database. They are using both our database and our database format exactly.

The final confirmation of IOBit's theft occurred when we added fake definitions to our database for a fake rogue application we called Rogue.AVCleanSweepPro. This "malware" does not actually exist: we made it up. We even manufactured fake files to match the fake definitions. Within two weeks IOBit was detecting these fake files under almost exactly these fake names.

Iobit Forum

We have never used the database of any other companies. And hope Malwarebytes stop spreading malicious rumors for hyping itself. The ridiculousness: who will trust and depend on a security product that can NOT even protect itself?

A legal letter will be released later, which will prove that there is no problem with Intellectual Property Rights.

For the sake of avoiding dispute and possible problems, we have deleted all disputed items in our database temporarily, and have updated IObit Security 360’s database.

Related Articles/Sources :

IOBit accused of stealing Malwarebytes database | Sunbelt Blog

IObit accused of stealing from Malwarebytes | Computerworld

Declaration from IObit | Iobit Forum

[Kees]

The evidence is rather convincing, and Iobit's defence pretty weak.