When it comes to your security, no web browser is perfect – and no malware app is going to catch everything. I came across BufferZone Free a few weeks ago and have been running it since, and I’m pretty impressed.
BufferZone adds another layer of protection to your browser by setting up a sandbox (an isolated “virtual directory” on your hard drive). As Trustware puts it, the program “transparently redirects modifications in your PC to a virtual, isolated environment, so that unauthorized modifications cannot be applied to your actual PC.” Malicious apps can’t write changes to your actual system files or registry – only BufferZone’s virtualized versions. Anything you download – temp files, images, executables, you name it – gets sandboxed. Why is that a big deal?
Well, it only takes a split second for a malicious app to burrow its way into the deep, dark crevices of your operating system.
How does BufferZone help?
The sandbox keeps these nasties from going resident on your system and gives your malware defenses time to obliterate them before they can cause any harm. If I click on a link to a key generator, the hosting website redirects me to another page that spawns a browser hijacker installer. If that happens, BufferZone neatly puts it in the virtualized directory, and my anti-virus software kicks in and nukes the threat within two seconds.
To top it all off, there’s no appreciable difference in the rendering speed of your browser and no real impact on resources. On my system, the hit was 0% on the CPU and about 9MB of memory.
Slick. Very slick.
The program comes in both free and paid versions (which offers customization and protection of multiple browsers), but I’ll only talk about the free one here.
Download the 9MB .msi file and install it, and BufferZone sets up a protected, virtualized directory in c:\virtual\untrusted\. All activity from your selected browser will now be redirected here and isolated from your “real” operating system.
Before I go any further with this, I’ve got to tell you to NOT knowingly visit any sites that are likely to infect your computer. You’re asking for trouble. I was, too, but I had to find out whether this app was the real deal or not. I also tested BufferZone Free on IE7 from a bare Windows XP SP2 install with no other patches applied.
To put BufferZone through the paces, I decided to go on a little jaunt around some of the most nefarious sites I’m familiar with. I headed over to a keygen site, did a few searches, and watched BufferZone spring into action as it popped up several alerts for items that were landing in the sandbox. The beauty of it: my anti-virus software caught every single one of them and removed them with ease. I surfed around carelessly for a while longer and exited Internet Explorer at which point some other evildoers tried to invade my system, but BufferZone and Avast! once again tag-teamed them into submission.
After a reboot, I ran a full scan with Ad-Aware and HijackThis and couldn’t find any traces of anything remotely malicious. Wow. I’m impressed!
Here’s the kicker. Even in the free version, the app will protect not only your browser, but any process spawned by the browser. Download an attachment from your Gmail account and launch it with Word, and Word automatically inherits the BufferZone protection. This is huge; even if your webmail provider automatically scans attachments, no scan is perfect.
The program worked beautifully in my testing and it’s footprint wasn’t even noticable. For a free application with such terrific security potential, BufferZone Free is definitely worth a download. If you’re still not convinced, try out Trustware’s proof of concept.
If you’ve tried BufferZone, what do you think of it? Got something better that you’d recommend? Let’s hear about it!
(by) Lee Mathews is a blogger who writes to share downloads, links, and tech advice with other slightly frustrated people at Unsightful.com.
Tagged: anti-spyware • anti-virus • browser tips • safer browsing • virtualization
