If it weren't for sandboxing, doing something as simple as reading a pdf, downloading an attachment, or surfing the Internet would be as dangerous as driving through a minefield. A false step and computer threats would have the door open to infect our computer and infiltrate the entire network. Sandbox environments are a cybersecurity guarantee that keeps cybercriminals at bay and also provide a controlled testing area for experiments by development and engineering professionals, such as Site Reliability Engineers (SRE). Today, at BETWEEN, we propose to learn a little more about the sandbox world. Let's go there!
What is a sandbox?
A computing sandbox is defined as an isolated environment where suspicious processes can be run in a controlled manner before they are implanted in the rest of the system. Assuming the metaphor of its translation from English ("sandbox" or "sandbox"), we can equate it to that place where the little ones play and get dirty without running any risk.
The sandbox restricts the functionalities that the application that is being tested or the code that is running accesses, and which are not. That is, it allows you to decide what software it will be related to, how much memory and bandwidth will be assigned to it, and whether it will connect with external devices, among other options.
In case of malware infection, with the sandbox we can achieve two objectives:
- Confining the malicious agent in an isolated container and preserving the integrity of the system.
- Put the threat under surveillance and obtain valuable information about how it behaves and what modifications it carries out in invaded environments.
In this way, cybersecurity systems will obtain the necessary data to learn and increase their effectiveness via machine learning, which will help them detect attacks earlier and abort them before they cause damage.
Sandbox environments are present everywhere in the technology that we handle on a daily basis. Web pages, browser plug-ins, pdf documents or mobile apps upload their content to sandboxes. This simple security measure prevents more than one from getting a good scare when they discover that cybercriminals have taken advantage of a small breach to enter your device and steal sensitive data ... or worse.
Advantages of using a sandbox
Sandboxes have various advantages at both a private and business level. In organizations they function as a tool for innovation. A sandbox can be used to test any process that involves general changes in the system, avoiding the setbacks that testing would bring in a real environment. And this dose of calm encourages creativity and research among employees.
In addition, sandboxes complete the protection provided by antivirus and cyber threat detection programs. Keep in mind that any isolated click of one of the users connected to the network could end in catastrophe if the sandboxes did not act as a wall. Some examples?
- Malicious advertising, zero-day attacks and malware downloads would take advantage of any browsing session to sneak into our system.
- Opening an email attachment would make us easy victims of a data hijacking.
- The Internet of Things exponentially multiplies the number of devices connected to the Internet and to each other. Without sandboxes, a threat that penetrates through one of them could end up damaging all the endpoints with which it establishes communication.
Where to implement a sandbox?
Sandboxing mechanisms are integrated in multiple technological tools, such as email providers, security software, firewalls, browsers, etc. We can also find sandbox principles in virtual machines, artifacts that replicate a complete system, including hardware, and that work as guests outside the host operating system.
However, the most popular sandboxes, in the classic sense of the term, are those generated by means of specific programs to enable alternative environments. These take the necessary functionalities from the host operating system and temporarily use them in the isolated execution of processes.
Sandbox applications for Windows and Linux
Among the best known sandbox applications for Windows and Linux are:
- Sandboxie:free and friendly, very intuitive, it installs and you learn to drive in a few minutes. It allows to open several sandboxes for our experiments.
- Shade Sandbox:Also free, its interface is extremely simple. Just drag the program you want to run into the sandbox area without compromising the entire system.
- ToolWiz Time Freeze:in this case, the operation is different from the previous two. ToolWiz Time Freeze captures the system and freezes it to restore as soon as you log in again. Thus, there is no trace of changes made in the meantime.
- Shadow Defender: its behavior is similar to that of ToolWiz Time Freezer.
- Firejail: Developed for Linux, it gives the option of creating custom security profiles for different applications.
As you can see, the sandbox is a very useful instrument that will save you dozens of problems within your working career in the field of computing. Would you like to find new challenges where to use it? At BETWEEN we put them on a tray. Come and build a successful professional career with us!
