The World's Safest Browser: BitBox

[techguy911]

It is MUCH easier to load in GesWall it is much easier to use than sandboxie and is much more user friendly.

What i don't get is WHY does not mozilla or microsoft create a program like this inside their browsers? also all they have to do is prevent people from running exe's from browsers or scan them in a cloud.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

How is this different from "virtual browsing" , Force Field and other components of security programs from ZoneAlarm and others ?

 

[Guest]

I trust the security of Firefox, I only resort to using VMs when I have to run Internet Explorer to properly view an ASP.NET website.

 

[bison88]

Or you can just install VirtualBox and slap on any version of linux you want (700MB) and get the same result lol. I don't see why you need to have a container with just a browser running on linux that reverts back to its original state every time. Seems like overkill and kind of stupid to be honest. If the virtual machine was Windows based or even OSX I could see reverting back being useful since those are the most heavily virus prone platforms.

 

[Guest]

Other than teenagers, whose browsing habits are as unsafe as their sex on average, most of the people who are most vulnerable to trojans and the like, are because of ignorance and would never be able to get this thing running in the first place.

 

[killerclick]

Turning off Javascript and Flash is like having sex with a condom on. You're protected but you're missing a lot.

 

[shanky887614]

i think i perfer the use of comodo, anything with a selfupdating antivirus,firewall,sandbox and has a default deny system in place

and is FREE is the perfect security

 

[proxy711]

[citation][nom]Sined[/nom]Yeah, lets use programs that use 8gigs of ram to do what sandboxie does with less than 50mb, I mean, this aint 2009 anymore, its 2011! im sure you have the ram to have 8gb sitting there, not to mention cpu cycles, hdd reads/writes, all for a browserWait what?[/citation]
No where in the article did it say thing about Ram use, nor did i say anything about ram use. I wasn't sticking up for bitbox it seems like a bad choice for a VM broswer. I was referring to people freaking out about a program that requites a total of 2gbs on a HDD, which is silly. I also pointed out that people have mentioned other ways to have a VM broswer that isnt bitbox (or in german) and doesn't require /startSarcasm a massive amount of hard drive space /endSarcasm.

Oh and if you were wondering i have 12gbs of ram sitting here, so yes i do use 8gbs of ram on programs frequently.

 

[Guest]

I've actually turned on quite a few non-Linux-geeks to the idea of having their wife and kids use Linux Mint as a Live USB key to browse the internet... That way all of the user's session data stays in RAM, and if need be, data can be saved to a data partition on the USB key.

'cause we all know that women, children, and the elderly are the quickest way to f*** up your PC....

 

[enforcer22]

[citation][nom]aaron88_7[/nom]And if your stupid enough to assume people purposely download viruses....[/citation]

Well alot of people do click yes and download when presented with the option with out thinking.. IMO yes thats purposely. Its also the most frequent way i see it happen.

 

[applegetsmelaid]

Me gusta! Streamline it a bit and spread it to the world.... then Apple can shut up about the whole "no viruses" nonsense once and for all.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

Thanks for letting me know it's only available in German, 3/4 of the way into the article.

 

[11796pcs]

The world's fastest browser doesn't connect to the internet... which of course destroys the point of having one...

 

[DSpider]

2 GB for a frigging browser ? Dude... TinyCore Linux ! It should be enough to run just the browser. Also, there are LiveCDs (roughly 700 MB) that you can just fire up with VirtualBox, and even if they come with slightly outdated browsers it doesn't really matter that much. Malicious code will be contained within the virtual session (unless you set up shared folders or manually copy them to a flash stick, etc).

Here's an idea: Download the Kubuntu LiveCD, fire it up with VirtualBox and use Konqueror to browser the web. Why ? Because most exploits are tailored for popular browsers (IE, Firefox comes second, then there's Chrome, Safari, probably Opera somewhere in there too...). Konqueror can even impersonate other browsers using various browser id's in case a website is IE-only or doesn't let you in if it's not one of the "popular" browsers.


But don't get cocky. If the browser is compromised (and you won't even know if it does), all they need is your username and password. Heck, most people are dumb enough to use the same ones for more than one accounts (myself included, unfortunately). "Bulletproof" is more of an abstract concept, really. There's always the human element, which unfortunately is the weakest link.

 

[bv90andy]

So... it's just FF4 in a virtual machine... big deal

 

[Guest]

I just use Sandboxie, it works on any browser and is the best damn thing going, and has been for years. It works on any program.
http/www.sandboxie.com/

 

[emjayy]

That's quite an extreme solution. For general browsing, I simply use Firefox running in Ubuntu, which has been my main OS for 3 years. I keep flash and other browser plugins in check with NoScript, so only those sites I trust can actually make use of my plugins. Unlike Windows, Ubuntu actually ships with sandbox technology by default, so if I ever feel the need for even more security, I can put Firefox in Ubuntu's built-in AppArmor sandbox. To thwart phishing attacks, I use OpenDNS instead of my ISP's default DNS service, and I never click on links in emails to navigate to websites. Whenever I'm forced to use a friend's PC to access the web, I run Ubuntu and Firefox on their machine from a thumb drive instead of trusting my passwords to their possibly infected copy of Windows. My Windows PCs are now permanently kept off the Internet and can finally be run without that dreaded antivirus software that used to cause more problems for me than viruses did, so life for me is excellent these days!

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]emjayy[/nom]That's quite an extreme solution. For general browsing, I simply use Firefox running in Ubuntu, which has been my main OS for 3 years. I keep flash and other browser plugins in check with NoScript, so only those sites I trust can actually make use of my plugins. Unlike Windows, Ubuntu actually ships with sandbox technology by default, so if I ever feel the need for even more security, I can put Firefox in Ubuntu's built-in AppArmor sandbox. To thwart phishing attacks, I use OpenDNS instead of my ISP's default DNS service, and I never click on links in emails to navigate to websites. Whenever I'm forced to use a friend's PC to access the web, I run Ubuntu and Firefox on their machine from a thumb drive instead of trusting my passwords to their possibly infected copy of Windows. My Windows PCs are now permanently kept off the Internet and can finally be run without that dreaded antivirus software that used to cause more problems for me than viruses did, so life for me is excellent these days![/citation]
I used to keep at least one computer off the internet completely just to have independence from any service and still able to access the offline content as I should. I try my best to have this ability these days too, but normally I don't care as much as to have a completely offline computer. Maybe some day I will discover I can't open the offline content stored in my hdd because I have not activated xyz codec or plugin or whatever drive/service pack they might have come up with, and they will be telling me that all I need to do is to plug it online and it will activate automatically without my need. But, how will it find the server after the zombie apocalypse has destroyed 99% of our civilization?

 

[virtualban]

p.s. I was only being sarcastic. I know full well that companies have no problem dropping a service, and the EULA allows them to do so or worse. There is no need for a zombie apocalypse to get a "server is never up" kind of trouble.
Maybe I should go back to having one machine never getting online, ever.
But this is all off topic. On topic I used to have a windows virtual machine, then I used sandbox too, but right now I am fine with chrome incognito and common sense if I use certain types of sites.

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]Sined[/nom]Yeah, lets use programs that use 8gigs of ram to do what sandboxie does with less than 50mb, I mean, this aint 2009 anymore, its 2011! im sure you have the ram to have 8gb sitting there, not to mention cpu cycles, hdd reads/writes, all for a browserWait what?[/citation]

Yes, I do...