Best sandbox software
Discusssandboxsoftwareatwww.facebook.com/webusermagazine 10 - 23 July^201947
What weliked:
Shade Sandbox’s
blank, featureless
interface looks a little
intimidating at first.
However, once you
realise you’re supposed
to drag application icons into
the empty box to run them in an
isolated environment, everything
slots into place.
There are no obvious signs that
Shade Sandbox is protecting a
program until you hover over its title
bar, when it surrounds the window
with a bright blue glow. You can run a
browser or any other program in the
sandbox, and nothing can escape from
it without your permission. However, if
you want to save any downloads you’ve
made in your sandboxed browser, for
example, you’ll find them in an isolated
folder that you can access from
Windows File Explorer.
Once you’ve placed an application in
Shade, it stays there even if you restart
your PC. To let it run normally again,
you have to remove it from the box.
What weliked:
If all you want to do is run
a browser in a safe
environment, Browser in
the Box can handle it. The
tool takes a fairly extreme
approach, though, because
it installs a version of Chrome or
Firefox (dependingon the version you
download) and runsit within a virtual
operating system (a cut-down version
of Linux, by the look of it). This made
the download bulky and the software
slow to launch and run.
When we tested the PersonalEdition
for Chrome, we found that it’s possible
to download files to our PC. They ended
up in our standard Windows Downloads
folder, although the software did at
least ask us to confirm that we wanted
to download the file and told us where it
was going. Malicious attacks should be
easily thwarted as long as you pay
attention to incoming messages.
How it canbeimproved:
We were slightly disturbed to find that
the tool uses version 66 of Chrome
- nine versions behind version 75, which
you’d get if you downloaded Chrome
today. This doesn’t really matter, since
your PC is protected from everything
that goes on in the browser, but it looks
old-fashioned with its angular tabs.How it could beimproved:
Dragging and dropping icons into
Shade Sandbox seems logical, but it
isn’t always obvious where your
program files are if, for example, you
want to add a program that you usually
access from the Start menu.OURVERDICT
ShadeSandbox camea solidsecond
inthisgroup, butthat’s partly
becauseitsrivalsdon’tquite fitthe
sandbox description.Shadecanrun
any software initsisolated zonebut
notaswell asSandboxiedoesit.OURVERDICT
Since most ofthethingswedoon
ourcomputersinvolve theweb,
andmost threatscomefromthe
internet,runninga protected
browserseemslike a sensible
choice.However, whilethisis a
neater conceptthanrunninga
browserina standard sandbox,it’s
a clunky wayofgoingaboutit.Turbo.net
turbo.net
Turbo.net is a different
and rather brilliant
way of doing
sandboxing. It
provides access to
programs that are
hosted safely on a
server somewhere
else, so running them
has no impact on your
PC. The problem is
that the free version
provides only four
minutes of access to
each program before
it shuts down, so you
have to be quick or
pay an eye-watering
$99 (around £77.93)
per month for five users.VirtualBox
http://www.v irtualbox.org
Rather than sandboxing your
programs, VirtualBox lets you run
an entire virtual operating system,
from
Windows to
Linux. This
is a good
option if
your PC can
handle it,
because
anything
you do is
truly contained but you can still
install and run any program you like.
However, you need a powerful PC
with a fast processor and plenty of
memory to run one operating
system on top of another.ToolWiz TimeFreeze
bit.ly/twtf4 79
ToolWiz Time Freeze is a sandbox
masqueradingas a backup tool. In
effect, it freezes time on your PC so
that nothing you do has a lasting
effect.
When
you’ve
finished
using it, any
changes
made to
your system
are rolled back, as if they’d never
happened. It’s good, but it could
expose your PC to malicious
software, even if it’s only temporary.BESTOF THEREST
Wh
reWh
to
apShadeSandbox|www.shadesandbox.com|★★★★
FEATURES★★★★ PERFORMANCE★★★★ EASEOFUSE★★★★R&S Browser in the Box|bit.ly/bitx47 9 |★★★
FEATURES★★★ PERFORMANCE★★★ EASEOFUSE★★★★★