Test unknown software ,securely

Hello there ,
if you are anything like me you try out any software that someone names to you , but while doing that you are exposing yourself to the potential of that software containing malware , although you might have anti-malware software installed  it is always a possibility that it might not detect the malware , so the advice ,"dont run any unknown software on your system"  was born. but i would say that it is a form of Escapism , why should i refrain from testing out a potentially useful piece of code ? That's right you should not , you can use a technique called "Sandboxing" to test software securely on your pc ,  read on to find out how...


In the sense of computer security and software development , a sandbox is a security mechanism for separately running  programs, generally used to execute untested code, or untrusted programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers, untrusted users and untrusted websites.The sandbox provides the program a highly restricted set of computer resources  to run  like a little closed space on disk and memory that is generally cleared after it stops the execution.Network access and read from input devices are usually disallowed or heavily restricted.

This allows you to run the software safely and stay safe from possible malicious coding in the program , there are  two common ways you can make use of this either you can use an anti virus suite that has the feature to sandbox any  foreign or suspicious programs that you run on your computer automatically , like avast! antivirus suite ,or you can set up a virtual machine , which emulates an entire computer and you need to install Operating System on it , this means that it is also possible for you to run legacy software that you find on the internet , this is also handy in case you need to run a piece of  software that ,you  know , contains a malware , one possible use for this is for a demonstration of the malware or to find a way to counter it . there are many virtual machine software available , VirtualBox ,VMware ,Windows Virtual PC .......
Other widely used examples of sandboxing includes adobe flash player and java applets ,also  most mobile platforms use some form of sandboxing on the applications that they run


if you want to read up more on this topic you can always ask Me in the Comments or Google :)
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