Installing Sandboxie on Ubuntu

Question

I'm using an Ubuntu 14.04 and I want to install Sandboxie on Ubuntu. I used it on Windows, so I'm comfortable with it.

How can I install Sanboxie on Ubuntu? If that is not possible then are there any others like it which I can use? Please share the installation procedures for the alternatives!

Solution

My suggestion is to use native applications like Gnu/Linux.

Cuckoo Sandbox

Is a modular, automated malware analysis system. Running from command-line on a Linux or Mac host, it uses python and virtualization (VirtualBox, QEMU-KVM, etc) to create an isolated Windows guest environment to safely and automatically run and analyze files to collect comprehensive file behavior analysis. These results outline what the malware does while running inside an isolated Windows operating system, including Win32 API calls, files created/deleted, memory dumps, network traffic trace, screenshots of execution behavior, and full memory dumps of virtual machines.

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Documentation [1] [2].

Firejail

Is a SUID security sandbox program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table.

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Project Page

R&S®Browser in the Box (formerly BitBox)

The Virtual Environment for secured and comfortable Web Browsing: On the basis of a “Browser-in-the-Box” concept a virtual machine is provided with a reduced operating system and a web browser encapsulated therein. Malware can’t thus penetrate the host operating system and potential damage in the separated virtual machine will vanish with each start of the browser by returning to a certified starting point. All of that is fully transparent to the user. Is basically Firefox in a Virtual Machine.

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Source: https://alternativeto.net/software/sandboxie/

Comments

[Chuck R]

If I recall, Sandboxie uses drivers to isolate processes, which is why it doesn't work in Wine. I used it many years ago as well before I made the switch. Linux has a type of sandboxing support called LXC -- Linux containers. Essentially, it's like running a virtual machine on the host machine itself but allows logical separation between process. So, you'd essentially run a second Ubuntu alongside your real OS. Programs runs from this second can only modify files in the second instance. Does that sound like something you'd like to learn about?

[Chuck R]

I suppose I should also ask about what you intend to use this sandbox for? I know Sandboxie allowed you to run a private browsing session before such support was integrated into most major browsers. Is there a particular use case that you're looking at?

[SY_13]

Truth is I don't exactly know what Sandboxie really does. I know it's a virtual machine and I was hoping it will allow me to play windows games which aren't supported by PlayOnLinux. Basically like an alternative to wine. Tell me if I'm wrong.

[SY_13]

This post was actually written by a friend who reccomended using sandboxie and so he typed the question.

[Chuck R]

Sandboxie isn't a virtual machine, it's a container. It basically runs a program in isolation. The program can still read all your system files, but any changes that it makes to files stay within it's container. So, if it were to modify C:\windows\system32\shell32.dll (as many viruses do) the change would instead get written to a new file in, say, C:\Users[username]\Sandboxie\virusfolder\Windows\System3‌​2\shell32.dll. Any time the program asks for the file it would get that version instead.

[Chuck R]

LXC works in much the same way, except that it doesn't proxy requests for files to your real machine, it isolates all processes within a container that contains a different copy of the OS. That OS, however, uses the same Linux kernel and hardware as your real OS. But, you can do things like deny access to certain hardware and put other restrictions on it such as CPU usage, network usage, etc. So rather than recording just the changes like Sandboxie does, LXC records everything but it's neatly contained within its own folder and can't read your real system files -- only the container's files.

[Chuck R]

Firejail from kyodake's answer seems to use the same technology as LXC, but LXC is available from the repositories and is probably more robust than Firejail, but I can't really speak to that.