Secure Way To Open Files

[Nathol]

The other day I was browsing a forum and I saw something very interesting that I wanted to try, I do not remember if it was this forum or not. Anyway, it was a program you can download and use it to open files that could be potentially harmful. The program acted as a different machine, and if the file was infected it would not make its way onto your real machine.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Sorry if I am not being very clear or explaining it enough.

[moaradin]

Just get an Antivirus lol.

[Deleted]

If you're having to open dodgy files, you're doing something dodgy, it's that simple. But a virtual machine would probably help for a lot of things, the only sure way is to stop downloading files
you shouldn't be.

[haxartus]

The most advanced viruses can detect a virtual machine and won't start inside it. The people writing these viruses aren't idiots.

[Deleted]

Which proves what I said, 'the most advanced viruses' are also not the most common, but if I'm honest I still have no idea why you'd want to open these files at all.

[Sarcasm]

Why should you all care what he's opening? He asked a simple question and you shoot him down for it, for crying out loud. If you've got nothing constructive to say, don't say anything at all.

To OP: It sounds like you're looking for a sandbox.

[Gat]

If you're having to open dodgy files, you're doing something dodgy, it's that simple. But a virtual machine would probably help for a lot of things, the only sure way is to stop downloading files
you shouldn't be.

Not really.. most windows application files are .exe which can easily put a virus on your computer. Hell even the itunes setup is .exe...

[Deleted]

Not really.. most windows application files are .exe which can easily put a virus on your computer. Hell even the itunes setup is .exe...

The day people start getting a virus from the official apple website will be a bad day for computing..

And in response to the post above the one I quoted, conveniently ignoring the fact that I also gave a constructive suggestion, I'll put the rest of my post another way: don't open dodgy files, it's bad for your pc, and the only way to be truly safe is to open them on a seperate machine on it's own network.

Since I'm in a better mood than this morning however, I will elaborate, there's basically two options, a sandbox or a virtual machine, they're very similar things in concept and in practice, but it basically comes down to a virtual machine will download and run a file, registry setting for the virtual machine will change etc, but it's impossible to write to the actual machine, this while safe does have the limitation that to run the file on your actual machine you still have to open it there, they also aren't the easiest things to use, especially as most use a Linux based operating system, so any potential threats to windows may not affect it anyway.

A sandbox is basically the same thing, but it's normally just a browser window, when you close the sandbox/browser anything you did is lost, you can't use the file outside of the sandbox without running it normally.

[haxartus]

the only way to be truly safe is to open them on a seperate machine on it's own network.

There is no need for a second machine. A second hard drive with it's own Windows installation works too. Just make sure it can't access the main hard drive.

[Deleted]

There is no need for a second machine. A second hard drive with it's own Windows installation works too. Just make sure it can't access the main hard drive.

The point is it's not cheap to buy a new version of windows specifically for this purpose, and fairly pointless if it's not for business purposes, I only mentioned it to give an example of why it's better to just not go near files you don't trust.