App Virtualization with Sandboxie

Virtualization is today the most common buzzword in the market, and not

without good reason. There are lots of different ways of doing virtualization,

and in this article we'll tell you about application virtualization. We'll use a

utility called Sandboxie for the job. It allows you to run any application on

your desktop in its own virtual environment. What this means is that it won't be

able to harm the rest of your machine. So even if the program crashes, or is a

malicious one, it won't affect the rest of your system. This can be a boon for

anybody, be it desktop users in an office, laptop users, or even home users. It

just enhances your desktop security.

Sandboxie ensures that the application running inside the sandbox never

writes data directly to your hard disk (though, if required the application can

read data directly from your hard disk). As a result if a malware gets executed,

it will only effect the virtual environment, which can be later discarded to

protect your system. While browsing, Sandboxie downloads all files onto the

sandbox. You can either recover these files immediately or at the end of the

session. You can even discard them. Sandboxie could also be configured for

monitoring applications, and issuing pop-up alerts if the monitored application

gets executed outside the sandbox. It works only on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and

Windows Server 2003.

Sandboxie supports multiple application sandboxes and you can have different settings for each sandbox

Installing and Using it



Install the software and configure the virtual container folder for the

Sandboxie. By default it is 'C:\Sandbox\% USER%\%SANDBOX%'.

To change this go to the menu bar, select Sandbox >Set Container Folder

option. From the popup window, choose the partition where you want to put the

container and provide the complete path. Select Sandbox>Create New Sandbox

option to create a new sandbox. In the popup window provide name for the new

sandbox. The new sandbox will be visible on the main console of Sandboxie. To

define the respective settings of the sandbox that you just created, right-click

on the sandbox and choose 'Sandbox Settings'. In the following window, go to

Resource Access and define the resources that programs running in this sandbox

must have access to. You can define which programs should have access to

Internet, and to which files and folders program should have direct access or

read only access etc.

To launch an application, right-click on the sandbox, go to the 'Run

Sandboxed' option and select the 'From Start Menu' . In the floating window,

simply choose the application that you want to run in the sandbox. Now, you can

use this application just like a regular application without worrying about

security of your system. You can even install applications inside sandbox and

run them in a completely isolated environment.

We tested plenty of applications inside Sandboxie such as Firefox, IE,

Thunderbird, P2P and IM apps. It worked smoothly at all times, even when we

simultaneously ran an application's virtualized thread as well as normal thread.

We even downloaded a malware, installed it inside the sandbox and then discarded

it after a couple of days. Later on when we ran the AV scan, we found no malware

on the system.