Sandboxie: Excellent Browser Protection Freeware

miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

Nov 24 2006, 06:10 AM

Hey guys,
[/tab]I came across this terrific FREEWARE tool called Sandboxie that can run almost any given program in a virtual sandboxed space and revert your system back to the original state it was in, once you terminate the program. For instance, when you surf using your favourite browser (Firefox/IE/Opera) - they can easily get infected with n-number of scumwares floating around on the net. More often than not they manage to slip through your AntiSpyware tool and infect your browser. Sandboxie provides a perfect solution for that. I found a very good review and description of the tool and am going to paste that here.

QUOTE

There's a scumware plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a "loaded" shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered, unwanted ads pop up on your screen and worse.

If you use Windows 2000 or later my top recommendation for safe browsing is a free program called Sandboxie [1] that creates a special contained "sandbox" environment on your PC. While browsing within the virtual sandbox provided by Sandboxie you are totally corralled off from other parts of your PC. So any files you download are isolated to the sandbox. Similarly, any programs that are executed only do so within the sandbox and have no access to your normal files, the Windows operating system or any other part of your PC.

Usage is remarkably simple. To start a sandboxed browsing session you just click the Sandboxie icon from the Quick Launch tray and this will launch your default browser in the sandbox. You can then use it in the normal way to browse to sites or download files.

If you downloaded a file it will install normally but again will be corralled off from your real PC. Anything it writes to your hard drive, any changes to the Windows Registry or changes to the Windows startup will be held in a separate area within the sandbox. Similarly, any new processes running in your computer memory will be sandboxed.

After you have finished browsing you can right click the Sandboxie icon and delete all sandboxed files and processes and your PC will be returned to the same state it was in before the browsing session. If you want retain particular downloaded files you can save them permanently before clearing the contents of the Sandbox.

The advantage is clear: any spyware, trojans, keyloggers or other malware products that infected your PC while browsing will be eliminated.

Sandboxie works fine with all browsers but requires Windows 2000 and later. It can cause problems on some PCs so backup before installing.

Source: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm#1

[tab]I grabbed it and started using it the moment I read about it - it works much smoother than any related Virtual Machine tool I've seen. I've used a couple of System State Restorers like DriveShield and DeepFreeXP - but the biggest problems with those were that they used to make your system/protected drive(s) completely readonly and could be made writeable only on a subsequent reboot. However, NOT SO with Sandboxie.

Features I liked about it:

Extremely small Disk Footprint of 900KB
Installer is only 241KB
Runtime Memory Footprint of 2.2MB (Sandbox Server)
Ability to selectively save some settings/downloads before shutting down the hosted program
Ability to define certain programs to be ALWAYS auto-launched in Sandboxed mode (so you don't have to manually run Sandboxie first and then run the program inside it)

Moreover, Sandboxie provides you with a Windows Task Manager like interface, where all processes you run under it are listed - and you can selectively terminate any of those processes in case of a freeze-up.

Give it a shot

Grab Sandboxie from: http://www.sandboxie.com/
If you like it and are really satisfied with the results, make sure you come back and add in your opinion. If you find flaws with it, report those too.

Cheers,
m^e

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t3jem

Nov 24 2006, 07:05 AM

Ok, well I just downloaded it and installed it. I ran IE under it and went to google to find a website I knew would have something on it. Well I get on the website, but my antivirus program caught a virus, so I don't know if this means that sandboxie didn't work or not, but I know I wasn't running my Antivirus program under sandboxie.

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miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

Nov 24 2006, 07:15 AM

See, your AV will still be monitoring whatever is being downloaded - whether in a Sandboxed mode or NOT. Sandboxie won't be able to tell on it's own whether you downloaded a virus/spyware - but what it WILL do is even if you somehow manage to run the virulent code, once you close your browser, all the infected programs will get restored to their original non-infected state. That much is guaranteed by Sandboxie...

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t3jem

Nov 24 2006, 08:04 AM

QUOTE(miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG @ Nov 24 2006, 12:15 AM)

Oh ok, well, I guess i'm just too much of a panzy to actually thoroughly test that theory, but maybe when I get tired of how my computer is running right now i'll check it out. Thanks for this, this sounds very cool

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HellFire121

Nov 25 2006, 01:18 AM

Hmm that's a pretty handy program, i might try this later when i get a chance to because some installers even if you accidently start them up will begin to run the code installing the spyware/adware or virus' or whatever. I might try to use this when other people are using my computer so they can do what they want in the sandboxed environment without actually doing any damage to my programs and documents.

-HellFire

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miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

Nov 25 2006, 06:35 AM

Yup - that's a good idea and that's what I wanted to do for a long time. I keep downloading all the trash in the world and try them out. Most I don't like and I delete/uninstall and keep only the best ones. I was so totally searching for something like this, that'd allow me to install something in a sandboxed environment and get rid of the whole thing (files + registry keys + any other changes it made) if I decided to trash it. This thing does just that

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toby

Nov 25 2006, 05:35 PM

Crashed any time I went past that first infomation screen, and when I uninstalled it, it restarted my computer.

Sounds like something I'd like though.

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knight17

Nov 28 2006, 12:18 AM

I have used this some months back when I heard about it in another forum.But It is good for running programs that you are not really sure about what it is going to do.It will slow down the application too.

As I am using Opera I really don't need this but will come handy If I want to test something I am not sure of.

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