Dear Sophos I'm very sorry...

I work for and am a influencer and approver for a multi million dollar company with thousands of employees and endpoints. I was actually changing my mind for the positive about you as a company after the fiasco that was your AV and web filtering appliances many years ago. These acquisitions you have made seemed to make your product better.. Demos you have provided us looked decent and while I feel the pricing was a bit much you were in the consideration.. But after seeing the total mess you have made of SBIE and lack of caring or honest and timely answers there is just no way I can suggest our company move forward with the purchase of your product. I'm sure you won't feel the ~500K bump in the road your losing but I feel like I'd be putting my company at risk with you based on the actions or lack of actions I see here. I'll be sure and let your sales guys know "I'm working on it", for the next few months.  I'd be surprised if this post lasts long but hey censorship for things we don't like!

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  • I found this link in another thread which I didn't read before.

    https://www.sophos.com/en-us/lp/invincea.aspx

    My guess wasn't that wrong then. I don't think they'd treat Sandboxie differently. If they were to sell it, who'd actually buy an old piece of software like Sandboxie? With all the Windows updates at this point is worth writing it from scratch probably. And I don't know if the brand name has any value.

  • :)

    I have no special information that everyone else doesn't have, all I have is a hunch.  But in case the hunch is right I don't want to say anything unhelpful or counterproductive.  Ther'll be plenty of time for that if it turns out to be something deplorable.

  • If Sophos is discontinuing Sandboxie altogether let's hope they have the decency to at least try to release it to opensource.  It already is earning zero revenue, so they have no revenue to loose.... EXCEPT....

    I still have not ruled out the possible implications of the incredible coincidence that the sudden disappearance of Sandboxie occurred at exactly the moment that Microsoft introduced a sandbox in Windows 10.  I would brush this off as a crazy conspiracy theory had I not seen something similar happen with a program that I followed closely in the 90s.  That coincidence opens up a Pandora's box of possibilities.

     

  • Ryan Cruze said:
    let's hope they have the decency to at least try to release it to opensource

    I'd love to see that happening. I don't think it the code would be that useful anymore, or Sophos would use it in its products. Googling, I found this other page:

    https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/131956

    What Invincea features are not included in Sophos Intercept X?
    While Sophos Intercept X contains deep learning and many advanced features not included in Invincea products, some Invincea features are not included in Sophos Intercept X.  Invincea browser isolation (container) is not available in Intercept X.  There are currently no plans to support browser isolation (container) in the Intercept X roadmap.

    I don't know if Invincea had any other sandboxing software, but I think they're talking about Sandboxie. But they could release the code to the public, even for some just good PR at this point. I don't know how much code would you need to write to fix SBIE's broken features in 1903, but it might still be the start for a something new. I've looked many times for other sandboxing software, but I've never found anything that works like sandboxie.

    Ryan Cruze said:
    the sudden disappearance of Sandboxie occurred at exactly the moment that Microsoft introduced a sandbox in Windows 10

    Exactly. Browsers already have builtin sandboxing, and now Windows Sandbox might be good enough just to test things. I don't know what plans Microsoft has for WS, but right now it's not a replacement for Sandboxie, unfortunately. Also at the moment you can't run other VM software if you enable WS, so it has its limitations.

    Sandboxie has still some value for other things though. Video games with online functionality often are not developed following the best practices, and can be insecure and an attack vector. Instead of web browsers and MS Office, Sophos could market SBIE to gamers. "You can safely run any online game in Sandboxie". I mean, I see so much VPN marketing targeted to gamers, I'm sure Sophos could make some money there if they wanted.