Security/legitimacy of Sandboxie?

I came accross this website a long time ago that uses a sandbox to protect your computer. Called Sandboxie. I've since revisited it lately and have been reading about it a lot on their website as well as many other websites (I also went through EVERY topic discussing sandboxie on NBR, lol). No one on here has really gotten detailed about it and it's not something people comment on very often. So, this has lead me to three questions.

1. Is using sandboxie (or any other program like it, for that matter) worthwhile for security purposes? I'm generally safe about what e-mails/sites I visit and stuff. But, I do occasionally like to try out new programs, w/o always doing my extensive research (e.g. running a .exe screensaver, you can expect you'll have trojans with that, but I still want to try it at times. And to be honest, I'm sure we've all stumbled upon a pron site from time to time, ha-ha, those things can be deadly. Not to mention when you're using P2P software).

2. The validity of sandboxie in particular. It sounds legit to me (I haven't run it yet) and I've seen some people swear by it. This isn't just a question of "does it really work", but also of how TRUSTWORTHY the programmers of this app are. Because, when you think about it, they are giving you a program to do much of your activity (online or otherwise) THROUGH their application. For all we know, this application could be forwarding the very information we want to protection, so on and so forth. I'd also be curious to know what you guys think sandboxie should NOT be expected to protect us from (e.g. I bet sandboxie isn't 100% safe from keyloggers, so long as there is internet activity during your sandboxie session, then it could piggyback your browser most likely, lol).

3. A lesser-important question. More out of interest. But, how where the heck does this "virtual" system store all the information, if not the physical hard-drive? Because, you can theoretically have 100GBs worth of data which you can "delete" within a matter of minutes, which sounds quite odd to me. Which, if that is the case, does it leave any tracks of "activity" on your hard drive? It all sounds understandable in theory, but where exactly located is this "mysterious infinite storage device"? Lol. Because if it were truly this great, then wouldn't it make it the PERFECT haven for pirates? Download (illegally), run (illegally), discard (discreetly), and never have any proof of existence on your hard drive (RAM, internet activity and so forth is a different discussion all together).

Thoughts/opinnions?

 

I'm not sure about Sandboxie in particular, but there's other windows virtualization software programs out there. Sandboxie is recommended in the Best Free Software thread, so I'd bet it's legit. To be on the safe side, follow the link in the sticky. I've also heard of it from random websites and people.

As far as I know (which isn't very in this particular security area), Sandboxie/virtualization software are very strong protection tools. However, I don't find it worth it as long as you already have the proper protection in place. If I had to have the extra protection, then Sandboxie would be a good idea.

About the last question, I believe Sandboxie runs an instance of Windows up while you are running the core Windows on your computer. What happens is that Sandboxie uses your HD as normal, but when you exit, everything that happened in that Sandboxie Windows is erased. All the files you downloaded, every change you made in that Windows, everything.

No, I don't think it would be a haven for pirates or anything like that. Even though Sandboxie erases everything, it probably leaves traces all the same. Not only that, the pirate would probably be caught through their computer's IP information and what not.

Just as a reminder, I'm not very knowledgeable in this area of security, but I hope this is somewhat close to the truth.

 

1 SandboxIE a very strong security tool. Whether it's suits you, depends on your security needs vs. surfing/net behaviour.
2 SandboxIE is a 100% legit and valid application.
3 Download it and learn about it here; link
Check out web browsing with SandboxIE here; link.
Check how to test applications with SandboxIE here; link.
Make sure to make a backup of all personal data before installing SandboxIE, sometimes it can react a bit funny (OJ funny, not funny funny) to other security applications when installing.
I've posted the links before here on NBR, so if you found them allready...well, then you should know what SandboxIE is all about.
For more extensive information and user comments on the program, check Wilders Security.
Cheers.

 

Thanks. Great information. I was doing a full-system back-up today anyhow, so good timing. (Bad timing = my HDD crashed yesterday and I was on the phone for 6 hours with Tech Support getting it to boot again, lol).
The wilders security forum is especially valuable. I will definitely use that resource more in the future.

 

I havent used it extensively either but I have also been reading up about it and let me explain how I think of it.

Basically I consider the computer a bath tub full of water.
I consider sandboxie to be a big plastic flexible wrap over the top of the bathtub.
You can reach through the plastic wrap to get to the bottom of the tub and play with it through the wrap or you can throw things on top but they dont actually mix.
Once you pull the plastic off, things havent changed.

makes a strange sort of sense to me

 

It has worked great for me! (Thanks Baserk for posting it in your sticky.)

I'm not sure it has really provided me much security, as I browse pretty secure anyways, but it has certainly kept my system free of the clutter. I do most my browsing within a sandbox, and my system is running excellently. In a sandbox right now in fact .

 

Potentv
Ha-ha, yes, I had a similar view of it working that way, too. An interesting analogy, though.

Gregory
I just tried Sandboxie for the first time yesterday. I liked it (a bit confusing on my first run-thru, as I skipped the literature for now). I decided I'd give it a test in some hostile territory. Picked a site I've gotten viruses/spyware from before and went to it with sandboxie. As far as I can tell, it did its job properly (I've scanned since and found no infections). I went back again without the sandboxie and WHAM, I got infected. Lol. I plan to really wring it through some stuff come end of the month, when I do a clean install (given I'll be getting a new notebook, anyhow).

Everyone
The security thread must hardly move at all for you guys to have found this thread again....jeez. Maybe because people can't find it on the main forum page? Lol.