Sophos Sandboxie is now available as an open-source tool

Sophos announced the public release of the source code of the sandbox-based isolation program Sandboxie.

Sophos is going to release the Windows sandbox-based isolation program Sandboxie in open source.

“Sandboxie has long been a favorite sandbox-based isolation tool since its original release over fifteen years ago. Now this technology will live on in the hands of its dedicated users.” Sophos Director of Product Marketing Seth Geftic said.

“We are thrilled to give the code to the community. The Sandboxie tool has been built on many years of highly-skilled developer work and is an example of how to integrate with Windows at a very low level.”

The sandbox was developed by Ronen Tzur and released on June 26, 2004, he sold the solution to Invincea in 2013. In 2017, Sophos acquired Invincea and included the sandbox-based isolation program in its product portfolio.

Releasing the tool as the open-source, Sophos aims at engaging malware researchers to improve its Sandboxie with knowledge of the community.

The latest version of the tool supports Win 7, 8.1 and 10 only, Sophos will not release further updates. The security firm confirmed that all restricted features have been made completely free in this version.

Sophos announced that it is planning to close the Sophos community Sandboxie forum on June 1st 2020

“The open source release has no code to check the license server. We have removed any checks against the license server since the 5.31.1 release. For this reason we will be shutting down the license server on June 1st 2020.” reads the FAQ section. “As and when the Sandboxie community embraces the available source code, transitioning it to an open source project, we will gradually wind down the website and expect to close the website during the fall of 2020.”

Sandboxie and the source code are available on the official website https://www.sandboxie.com/.

The source code was released under the GPL v3 license, below the steps to build the Sandboxie.

1. Compile the source code
2. Sign the generated binaries (optional for most things but required for the driver)
3. Create the installer (optional but useful for initially performing tasks like installing the service and driver)

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Sandbox, malware)

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