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Comment by Aleman360 | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly why sandboxed apps (e.g., iOS/UWP/etc.) are a good thing.

Or the Mac App Store itself. Its enforced sandboxing would have provided a decent first line of defense against this, but torrent clients can't be submitted to the App Store due to Apple not liking the legal aspects, not to mention the other issues people have with it. (Outside the store, apps can still opt into sandboxing, but that wouldn't help with a malicious installer.)

I doubt Apple keeps it out for "Legal" aspects. iTunes sales seems more likely.

For Windows there is SandboxIE: http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?DownloadSandboxie

It should be able to sandbox Windows Apps, except for Metro/Modern UI Apps and Microsoft Edge.

Too many programs are having a backdoor or Trojan in them now. It is a good idea to run any app that accesses the Internet in a sandbox first to see what it does.

Just a warning: by default it doesn't protect your documents from reading.

It isolates the process, all writes (filesystem, registry) go to the sandbox instead of the host filesystem, so a malicious software can't easily install itself. But reading data is mostly unprotected by default, so a malware ran in a sandbox may steal some sensitive data. To protect such data you have to pre-configure sandbox manually.

Also cameyo to make your own:

http://www.cameyo.com

And they have prepackaged sandboxed apps:

https://online.cameyo.com/public

I have no problem paying for apps but for people who have paid for SandboxIE, do you think you've got your money's worth out of it?

Yes. Back when I still used Windows five years ago, the app was an essential tool for me. All web browsers, downloaders and basically anything else that I consider high risk must be run in a sandbox, which is routinely emptied. Less risky apps are sometimes also installed in a sandbox, which is emptied much less frequently. And it's great for trying out trial versions of software before I fully trust their publishers. I didn't run any antivirus on that machine at all and I'm that confident. Nowadays I've switched to OS X but I still miss the easy sandboxing of basically any app.

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