Does the Safe Zone basically provide a sandboxed browser?

[ecbritz]

I like Avast's Safe Zone which I use mostly for internet banking. I'm just wondering: if I put a browser (e.g. Chrome) in Avast's Sandbox, and open my internet banking site with the browser in the Sandbox, would I not get the Safe Zone effect too? The Safe Zone isolates an interactive internet site (such as an internet banking site) from the rest of the Windows system. If there is undetected spyware lurking in the system, it can't penetrate the Safe Zone. A sandboxed browser should have the same effect. Not?

If I am right, then anti-virus programs offering only a sandbox also provide a safe zone for browsing, albeit in a roundabout way. The Safe Zone in Avast seems to provide only (or specifically) safe browsing while the Avast Sandbox seems to provide only (or specifically) safe running of programs. But the two conveniences can both be provided by the Sandbox. Or is that not the case?

[Gopher John]

Avast SafeZone protects the session (passwords, etc.) from any issues on the machine, such as a keylogger, or trojan that exists.

OTOH, Avast Sandbox protects the OS from anything that is run within the sandbox, to prevent infection of the OS.  So the answer is no.

[ecbritz]

Thanks. I understand that sandboxed operations cannot affect the operating system. But can a browser being run in the Sandbox be affected by viruses or malware active in the operating system? If the browser in the Sandbox is used to connect with and open an interactive website (e.g. a banking site), can that interactive site be affected by viruses or malware active in the operating system? In other words, does the protective isolation provided by the Sandbox work in both directions? This is really what I want to know.

[Gopher John]

Thanks. I understand that sandboxed operations cannot affect the operating system. But can a browser being run in the Sandbox be affected by viruses or malware active in the operating system? If the browser in the Sandbox is used to connect with and open an interactive website (e.g. a banking site), can that interactive site be affected by viruses or malware active in the operating system? In other words, does the protective isolation provided by the Sandbox work in both directions? This is really what I want to know.

I would think that would be a possibility, if the web site was vulnerable.  The sandbox is not trying to protect the outside resource, only the local OS, environment of the machine that the sandbox is running on.

SafeZone, on the other hand, protects the SafeZone browser session from being compromised by anything being run on the local machine that might be attempting to gather private information from that session.  Two entirely different things.

[ecbritz]

I'm a paid-up user/subscriber to both Avast Anti-virus Pro (running on three machines) and Avast Internet Security (running on one other machine). So please do not think that I am not entitled to Avast Forum Support, or at least to some interesting discussion, when I refer to another AV program, Qihoo's "360 Internet Security". 360 has a sandbox that places a "Protected by 360" tag above websites opened from Chrome, once the Chrome run button has been dragged to the sandbox and Chrome as a program has been started from there. If you see the tag, you are protected while doing work within an interactive website, like a banking site, I assume. If you don't see the tag, you are not protected, I assume. Some programs like OpenOffice don't behave well when opened in the 360 sandbox. But WordPerfect works well. If WordPerfect is started inside the 360 sandbox, it will store all document files produced and saved with it inside the 360 sandbox. It can't save anything to the system while running in the 360 sandbox. This means that these files are created and saved out of reach of any malware active in the OS (I assume). I would love some discussion on how the Avast Sandbox and the 360 Sandbox differ in the protection they give. Too much to ask you to download and install Qihoo's 360 Internet Security? Is a free program -- the question is what protection it really offers for free, compared with Avast products.

[Gopher John]

The Avast sandbox, by default, is preventing the malware running within the sandbox from writing to the unprotected (not in the sandbox) parts of the hard drive.  This can be modified to allow some saving of files available outside of the sandbox.

I don't know anything about Qihoo's sandbox, or any of their products.

[ecbritz]

I understand the function of the Avast sandbox pretty well after your appreciated explanations.  I did not really understand the Avast sandbox in the past. The thing that attracted me to an investigation of the Qihoo product, is its sky-high ratings at AV-Test.org ( http://www.av-test.org/en/home/ ). This organization is completely above board. You can see the factsheet of the March 2014 comparative AV tests in a pdf document which can be viewed or downloaded at http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/avc_factsheet2014_03.pdf . The 360 Internet Security program is partly based on Bitdefender, which might explain why it rates almost the same as Bitdefender. The problem with 360 is the lack of documentation in English, user forum in English, or other forms of support in English. I wrote to Qihoo's support email address and was answered in Chinese characters. This shrouds the important Sandbox function in mystery, even though one can see the effect of the 360 Sandbox when you experiment with it. This free AV product is apparently used by more than 400 million users in China, which adds to my curiosity. Anybody want to try it out and tell me how he/she understands the 360 Sandbox? I'm not leaving Avast for the time being, rest assured.