Malwarebytes acquires AdwCleaner

[starbuck]

 

After raising $50 million earlier this year from Fidelity, security startup Malwarebytes said that it would use some of the funding for acquisitions, and today comes some related news.

 

The company is acquiring a startup out of France called AdwCleaner, whose product specifically tackles and removes adware and has seen a total of 200 million downloads across Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 in 32 and 64-bit platforms.

 

Malwarebytes will keep the AdwCleaner brand for now.

Over time the plan is to gradually integrate its software into Malwarebyte’s wider product set, which currently addresses malware, ransomware and exploits that fall under the radar of many of the bigger antivirus solutions.

 

“AdwCleaner is particularly vicious in the way it catches and destroys bloatware, adware and other ‘PUPS’ and we want to have that available to as many people as possible, both consumer and enterprise,” said Marcin Kleczynski, the CEO and founder of Malwarebytes.

 

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. “Everyone was very happy with the deal, i’ll just leave it at that,” he added. He added that Malwarebytes has been trying to buy AdwCleaner “for a long time.”

 

“Given my background as a teenage entrepreneur myself, I only ever wanted AdwCleaner. It’s a fantastic product, fighting a very worthy cause.

Their reasons for building it were right, and this comes through in the passion of the management team, and quality of the product.”

 

Indeed, like Malwarebytes, AdwCleaner was started by teenage computer enthusiasts looking to solve a problem for themselves (Kleczynski originally built Malwarebytes to remove malware from his parents’ computer).

 

In the case of AdwCleaner, it was founded by three 17 year-olds in Paris in 2011 and saw viral popularity early on.

Two of those original founders, Jérôme Boursier and Corentin Chepeau, continued to develop new versions of AdwCleaner throughout university, and appear to be the only employees of the completely bootstrapped company.

 

Both will be joining Malwarebytes, Boursier as part of the engineering team, and Chepeau as part of its research operations, Kleczynski said. “We are looking forward to seeing what they are capable of.”

 

 

Source:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/19/security-startup-malwarebytes-acquires-adwcleaner-to-nip-adware-in-the-bud/

[allheart55 Cindy E]

This should be interesting, to say the least.

[Tony D]

Two great applications. Good can come from this.

 

Hope they don't screw things up.