Sandboxie Plus: Secure, Easy-to-Use Sandboxing Software
The motivation and experience of using Sandboxie Plus to isolate domestic Chinese software such as DingTalk, including compatibility issues with Tor Browser and GitHub Desktop.
Machine-translated from the Chinese original.
During winter break in 2020, I once tried running “Homework Help Network” with Sandboxie, and the result was less than satisfying. For over a year afterward, on the principle of “privacy first,” I didn’t install any domestic Chinese software on my personal computer.
Until recently, when another wave of the pandemic hit and we went back to online-class software suites. So I was forced to start looking for a good sandbox to isolate domestic software from my personal data.
About Sandboxie Plus
Sandboxie is a sandbox-based isolation program for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows NT-based operating systems. It creates a sandbox-like isolated operating environment. Applications can be installed and run inside Sandboxie without permanently modifying local / mapped drives and the Windows registry.
GitHub: sandboxie-plus / Sandboxie Official site: Sandboxie-Plus | Open Source sandbox-based isolation software
Testing and experience
“DingTalk” ran normally inside Sandboxie Plus; login, group chat, and other features all worked fine with no noticeable performance drop. Sandboxie did pop up an error, SBIE2203, saying it had failed to reach the Sandboxie service:
DingTalk.exe (3568)：SBIE2203 与 Sandboxie 服务的通信失败: *GUIPROXY_00000001; MsgId: 12 - DingTalk.exe [C0000024]“Tor Browser” failed to launch, reporting a missing DLL file.
“GitHub Desktop” launched normally, but Sandboxie popped up an error, SBIE2205, reporting a service it does not implement:
git.exe (19676)：SBIE2205 未实现该服务: ConsoleInit (C00000D4)Compatibility is decent overall; the occasional small error is bound to happen, since Sandboxie can’t fully replicate certain Windows behaviours (Windows Sandbox should do better on that front), and none of the software above was specifically tuned for Sandboxie either. Still, I’m quite happy just being able to lock homegrown malware-grade software inside it; running things like Tor Browser and GitHub Desktop directly on bare metal doesn’t worry me much.