14 DAY TRIAL // The application featured in this episode of our Security App of the Week series is Sandboxie, a piece of software designed to allow users to run potentially untrusted apps in a virtual, secure environment. Moreover, Sandboxie is a program that should be installed on the computers of all security enthusiasts.
The app is not only easy to install, but also easy to operate. After a fairly basic installation process, during which certain compatibility checks are performed, the customer is presented with an almost empty window whose purpose is to display the available sandboxes and the software that’s being run in them.
While every task is contained inside the application, the possibility to cause real harm to the device being close to none, Sandboxie does allow users to transfer items from the virtual environment to a location on the hard drive by utilizing the "Quick Recovery" feature.
Unskilled users should have no trouble completing simple tests, but the developers also make available a large number of options that allow advanced customers to configure the program to their own liking and perform detailed analysis on a software.
So let’s take a look at a couple of scenarios in which Sandboxie could be a highly useful tool for security researchers who aren’t backed up by a billion dollar company.
For instance, Trojans can be analyzed while they perform malicious actions and attempt to communicate with their command and control servers.
Also, there’s one even more particular scenario we would like to mention. Some of our readers may remember the Zeus-infested Slowloris tool that cybercriminals were spreading among Anonymous supporters when the hacktivists launched attacks against the FBI, Department of Justice and other government entities.
Of course, we don’t encourage anyone to participate in distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks since in most countries they’re illegal, but the thousands of internauts who may have downloaded the altered variant of Slowloris might have noticed that something was amiss if they had tested it in a safe environment before using it.
The latest version of Sandboxie is available for download here.
A complete review of the application can be found here.