Malwarebytes

Our story

Back in 2004, Marcin Kleczynski picked up a nasty malware infection one day while cruising the Internet in search of video games. This despite having a big-name paid antivirus in place.

It was the family computer, so his parents said, you have to make this right. No big deal, said Marcin. He worked as a computer tech after school in Chicago. How long could it take to remove a small bit of malicious code?

Try three solid days.

Three days searching the Internet and consulting with other people on security forums like spywareinfoforum.com who had similar problems. Who had also come to the same two conclusions:

There was a lot of new malware out there.

Traditional antivirus wasn’t up to the task.

So Marcin set out to build a better malware fighter. He taught himself code and eventually engineered a small but highly effective anti-malware tool called Rogue Remover that quickly became popular in the security community.

More importantly, in this community Marcin discovered like-minded security gurus and malware hunters. They battled malicious code, traded malware intel, and helped desperate folks who came to the message boards. And they were coming up with outside-the-box answers to the new threats that gave traditional antivirus a hard time. On their own dime and their own time.

Today, threats have mutated far beyond simple viruses. Cryptojackers turn your browser into a bitcoin-mining operation while ransomware locks data files, paralyzing businesses and national infrastructure all over the world. And malicious code is now polymorphic, constantly shape shifting to elude detection by traditional antivirus and their old signature-based technology.

So now it takes a hacker to beat a hacker.

It's this hacker's mentality that has made Malwarebytes one of the most trusted names in cybersecurity. Our team of more than 600 malware hunters, software engineers, and security industry veterans has been awarded six patents for our innovative technology. And our tech is validated by the results—millions of folks and businesses worldwide rely on Malwarebytes code to protect what’s important.

But beyond the tech, the team is united behind one simple belief: You and everyone have a right to a malware-free existence.