Sophos has announced that its sandbox-based isolation tool Sandboxie is now open source. Sandboxie was acquired by Sophos in 2017 as part of the takeover of Invincea. Sophos made Sandboxie free to use last year, and said at that point the tool would be moving to an open-source model.

Sandboxie supports sandboxing any other Windows applications that required a secure virtual sandbox for while running. It runs programs in an isolated space, preventing them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer. 

When running programs within Sandboxie everything happens as normal, so users can click on links, visit websites, and download files, but if you encounter something containing malware, you just shut down Sandboxie and your system is safe and non-infected.

Applications that can be run in Sandboxie include most web browsers, mail and news readers, instant messengers and chat clients, peer-to-peer networking, and most games including online games that download extension software code.

Writing about the change to open source, Sophos Director of Product Marketing Seth Getic said:

"Frankly, the easiest and least costly decision for Sophos would have been to simply end of life Sandboxie. However, we love the technology too much to see it fade away. More importantly, we love the Sandboxie community too much to do that.

The Sandboxie user base represents some of the most passionate, forward-thinking, and knowledgeable members of the security community and we didn’t want to let you down."

In practical terms of who will take over the management of the open source version, Sophos said:

"Sophos is currently engaging with members of the community who are willing to take on the Sandboxie source code and make it available through an open source project to the community. We will keep you informed about the progress."

More Information

Sandboxie Website

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