free Program to "watch" possibly infected programs

[lbsf1]

Hi guys.

I'm wondering if their is a free peice of software that does the task I'm looking for.

I regularly come across dubious looking programs the I download for different uses,. I worried that some of them may contain viruses however I don't know if they are legit until I open them, often they say they do exactly what they want however that could lead to it being able to put a virus on my computer. I'm looking for a program that keeps an eye on what this program is doing while I run it so it warns me and stops it if it trys anything dodgy.

I already have MCafee installed to protect my computer, however often this has failed to stop things. Luckily these virus's have been easy to get rid of.

If anyone knows of a program that would be able to do this would be great.

Thanks
Luke

 

[salvage-this]

MCaffe is not all that good so I would get rid of it for something better (Avast Free Edition Or Microsoft Security Essenitials)

When you have the program downloaded you can right click the .exe and it will have the option to scan it before you open it. You could also google the program before downloading it to see if there is a review or any links to viruses come up in the search.

 

[plutoniumman]

I usually run most programs sandboxed. There's a free sandbox application called sandboxie ( http://www.sandboxie.com/ ) that does a pretty good job, and it sounds like it would suit you well.

Basically what a sandbox does, is it isolates your system from whatever programs you choose to run within the sandbox. Any changes the program makes never make it to your actual system. This site will probly explain it better than me: http://ugr.com/nl0108.html

Sandboxie doesn't permit direct access to hardware (except to GPU), so some applications like disc burning software might not work unless you grant this access. Other applications which have extremely intrusive copy protection schemes don't seem to work either.

Ultimately, if you run your applications in a sandbox, and it turns out it tried loading up your PC with porn or something, it'll never make it to your actual system, and can all be undone as if nothing happend with a few clicks.


EDIT: Just noticed you wanted to watch applications... Don't know a good way for that lol

Sandboxing software can be used in a way to see what a program does, after it's done its thing, by looking into the sandbox and observing any new/changed files, and looking at the registry file (registry in the sandbox contains only new/modified registry entries; same thing applies for files).

 

[lbsf1]

Thanks guys.

Yeah I know that mcafee's pretty rubbish, ive got avast free aswell.

That sandbox program sounds exactly like what I want. It will allow me to run programs and know the arn't going to destroy my system if it comes up that they arn't legit.

 

[johnb35]

Yeah I know that mcafee's pretty rubbish, ive got avast free aswell.

If you have both installed then you have to uninstall one of them. You can't have 2 active virus scanners installed at the same time, it will cause issues.

 

[plutoniumman]

Yea johnb35 is right. They could, in a sense, start 'fighting' with each other.

If you want to be serious about security, don't pirate things. Especially not your OS or antivirus. ...And sandbox everything else you don't trust or is risky (like web browser).

Just a heads up, if you sandbox your web browser, any new bookmarks, settings, history or anything else changed while in sandbox will be cleared when you decide to reset the sandbox.