Stories about: Sandbox Security

The Internet is a scary place. Criminal malware lurks on legitimate and illegitimate Web sites alike, looking to steal your money one way or the other. Vendors have been scratching their collective heads attempting to make more consumers safer, more often. One of the results has been a class of anti-malware software that I call sandbox protection products. These items encapsulate Internet browsers (and e-mail programs and sometimes any other program you can run) within a virtual, emulated cocoon designed to keep malware from reaching and modifying the underlying host computer.

Two years ago, GreenBorder, one of the early "sandbox" browsers, received mighty applause from Wall Street Journal tech guru Walt Mossberg. The sandbox browser -- basically, a browser running in a virtual container -- promised to keep nasty code from spilling into a computer's operating system and wreaking havoc.