Im sorry to ask this, I know this is a dumb question but what is sandbox? i have never understood how it works so if you can give me a brief description that would be great. Since its coming out in 2010 i should know how it works.
Hi portage,
First, there are never "dumb questions", when there is a will to learn
In addition to what
Kyle suggested to look at it's probably better to start from some readings about
virtualization as a whole.
You may start from “wiki” articles. Please don't be offended by such advice.
Basically, vitrualisation provides methods of creating the environment which is isolated from the main (host) computer environment.
There are Software and Hardware methods of implementation of such environments
You are creating and using virtual machine, which is working as a real one.
What
Kyle mentioned –
Sandboxie - is one of the Software implementations.
You can read about
Returnil as well
http://www.returnilvirtualsystem.com/... and there are others
You may run either separate processes or even whole Operating System(s) (same or different) within your host OS.
All executions and changes made by that are going on in those isolated “sandboxes” and none of the changes apply to the host. Therefore after you finish working with sandboxed process and/or whole virtual system you may dismiss all changes or sometimes you may want to save only those things that you considered to be trusted.
Because of virtually complete isolation from the host such technique is used as one of the security layers of protection. Say, if malware sneaked into your virtual machine and made a damage there will be no implications to your host system as soon as working session with sandbox was finished (your virtual machine was shut down).
Well, there could be (and there are some) security flaws in this technology too, but in any case that makes malware writers' life much more difficult and they have to use very sophisticated methods in order to find and exploit such vulnerabilities. So, using virtualization/sandboxing substantially increases the level of protection.
I hope the above may help... a bit
My regards
Author