Windows sandbox-based isolation technology “Sandboxies” released in open source

April 9, security company Sophos announced that “Sandboxie”, a tool for creating Sandbox environment, has been released in open source.  The source code is released under GPLv3 license, and it is available on the official website.

Sandboxie was developed 15 years ago as a tool for creating sandbox for Windows.  Being a software that creates isolated sandbox environment to run applications, it can safely run web browsers and mail clients, and is useful for testing applications.  It can protect personal data within a local storage from being manipulated via web browser, and blocks programs from wrongfully collecting data. 

It supports Windows 7 and above.  It is confirmed that it runs on web browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, CyberFox, Opera, and IE 6 to 11.  The latest version is v5.22.2, released in March.

Due to being released in open source, Sandboxie forum is scheduled to close on June 1, 2020.  The existing license server is also scheduled to shut down on the same date.

Sophos acquired Sandboxie technology through the acquisition of the company in 2017.  In September 2019, due to the fact that it was not important from the business point of view, they revealed their plan to publicly release Sandboxie source code.

In 2019, Sophos agreed on the acquisition by a private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and  in March 2020, they announced the completion of the acquisition deal.

Sandboxie
https://www.sandboxie.com/