Sandboxie explorer context menu - poorly thought out entries?

For a long time there has been an issue that I have had with Sandboxie. I have disliked it because it is a big security issue, at least it is for me.

This is with the right click Sandboxie menu item. When installed it is almost always placed right below the Run as Administrator. This seems a really bad idea to me because any mistake could run something which I would not want to run as Admin getting run as Admin. Even mistakenly running a browser as Admin is a bad idea. There has been occasions when the Sandboxie menu item is not immediately below Run As Admin but on many occasions, as it was on my current install, where it is/was immediately below Run as Admin.

I have made a work around by editing the registry and adding another program between the Run as Admin and Run Sandboxed. That give a little room for any mistakes to be avoided but I think these two items should ideally be at opposite ends of the menu.

I have tried various programs to re-arrange the context menu without success. Manually editing the registry and adding another command which I have chosen as ConEmu which is a jazzed up console and this puts a little bit of space between the two items.

Any thoughts on this?

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  • Barb@Sophos said:

    Hi Red Dwarf,

    I remember we discussed this one in the main forums. I will bring back the request to the dev team and let you know if they have any new info to share.

    I am not sure that this was discussed with me but I could be forgetting. I would welcome any feedback from the devs on whether they can do anything to address this because it does not seem ideal to have to edit the registry to avoid this from happening.

    Barb@Sophos said:
    As a thought, instead of right-clicking on a "suspicious" file, just drag and drop it to the Sandbox. That way you can prevent this accidental Run as Admin trigger. 

    Added content:
    I am assuming you are referring to suspicious files, but there are also other options I didn't consider. For example if you want to run X program as Sandboxed every time, you can create a shortcut: https://www.sandboxie.com/ConfigureMenu#shell 

    Or, if you are using the paid version, put them in a forced folder / set them as forced programs/files:
    https://www.sandboxie.com/ProgramStartSettings#folder

    Again, these are all alternatives to the right-click--> Run Sandboxed option 

    Thanks!

    Yes I do have a paid license, it was one of the first programs that I purchased a very long time back. However I do not know how long because the email was lost when I moved email providers and downloaded messages which got lost with a hard drive failure. I have no emails before March 2016 and I purchased the license more like 2005/6 at a guess.

     

    Thanks for the suggestions. However getting into the habit of right clicking and selecting Run Sandboxed will be hard to get around. I have the sandboxes in the send to menu but never use them.

    It's not specifically suspicious files it's more about habit and resisting habit if there are any suspicious files. But as I have mentioned, I would not want to run my browser as Admin by mistake even though that would not be such a catastrophe as any suspicious files that I might want to test. It just seems like a really bad idea to have the Run Sandboxed item right below the Run as Admin item.

    The Forced folders looks interesting and is not something that I have used. I will consider possible applications of that. Thanks for all your suggestions.

  • Hi Red Dwarf,

    If you need help regarding your license please email support@sandboxie.com 

    I will update this thread if anything new comes up regarding the context menu issue. 

    Thanks!

    Barb@Sophos
    Community Support Engineer | Sophos Technical Support
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  | Sign up for SMS Alerts
    If a post solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.

     

  • Barb@Sophos said:

    Hi Red Dwarf,

    If you need help regarding your license please email support@sandboxie.com

    I do not need any help with my license, sandboxie is activated and has not had any problems since the time I activated it, whenever that was, it's been a fairly long time and probably shortly after I re-installed windows on 22nd Feb this year. I don't want to mess around with that with the issues that some people have been having with activation.

    I would prefer to be using the latest version but with the issues with anything newer than 5.22 has with my password manager functionality, unless it works 100% with the latest version then I will leave it well alone. I did try a slightly newer version and my password manager stopped working in sandboxed browsers. When the forum is back up and I have some spare time, which I do not have a lot of ATM, I will continue the thread that was open.

    Barb@Sophos said:
    I will update this thread if anything new comes up regarding the context menu issue. 

    Thanks!

     

    That would be interesting. I am sure you can understand why the current situation can be so risky and considerably less than ideal. They should be at opposite ends of the context menu really. I do not remember how the menu items got separated in the past but something did manage to separate them but I cannot remember what it was.