Sandboxie - Running your applications in a sandbox
The term “sandbox” means to run code in a virtual enviornment so as not to harm the underlying system.
I have heard of the term “sandboxing” but have never really looked into running any applications in a sandboxed environment. While posting an earlier entry, I read of a guy running his Firefox in a program called Sandboxie so I decided to give it a try.
I installed Sandboxie and ran an instance of Firefox in it. Everything I did with my sandboxed Firefox was kept away from my running system: all registry entries, bookmark additions and deletions, browsing history, downloaded software (inclusing malware), everything.
The best part of it all is that after you’re done browsing (or whatever application you’re using) you simply delete the sandbox and all traces of it are gone. Well, not ALL traces as it does touch your hard drive so if you were to run a disk forensics scan it would find traces of your sandboxed activity. Fortunately, Sandboxie has already thought of that so they offer a way for you to integrate your existing favorite secure disk wiping application with their delete function. It does require editting the registry, however.
The author of Sandboxie is providing this software free of charge. After 30 days of use, the program will popup “reminders” asking you to kindly pay the $20 lifetime registration fee that gives you not only tech support but also a few other cool software additions like letting you know when software was launched outside of the sandbox (like a trojan install). The paid version also lets you automatically sandbox specific programs even if they weren’t launched inside the sandbox. Registered users can also have as many sandboxes open as they want, whereas the free version only allows one.
Of course, if you ask me, Linux is the best sandbox I’ve ever used! 