using sandboxed plugins with natively installed apps

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sandb0xie
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:23 pm

using sandboxed plugins with natively installed apps

Post by sandb0xie »

Let's suppose a user has a design application installed natively in Windows.

The design application can use commercial 3rd-party .dll files which run as plugins. These plugins are installed by installers, which often place additional requisite assets in locations such as:
C:\Program Files
C:\Program Files (x86)
C:\ProgramData
C:\Users\username\Documents
...and so on. The plugin installation processes also make changes to the system registry.

Let's say the user is testing and using hundreds of these plugins. In an effort to institute portability of the setup, the user gets the idea: "What if the plugins are installed in Sandboxie, and then the native applications are pointed to them? This way, the sandbox of installed plugins can be archived and synced into any machine for immediate use."

The user tries this. Let's say that during the sandbox installations, the user installs all the .dll files into /drive/C/DLLs/...

Next, in the native design application, the user designates that location as the plugin folder. (Many such applications allow the user to designate alternate plugin folders.) At first, this appears to work: The design application successfully loads some .dlls from the sandbox.

Then the user discovers a problem: Because the native design application is referencing the native Windows file structure and registry, any plugins that rely on their own additional assets and registry entries fail to work properly. Even though the .dll itself is being called from within the Sandboxie structure, Sandboxie cannot enforce that the native application use the Sandboxie structure to locate the plugin's assets. Thus, the plugin seeks its assets in the native Windows structure - not the Sandboxie structure - and of course, the assets cannot be found. Therefore, the plugin fails to operate properly.

If the design application were also installed in Sandboxie, everything would work because both the design application and the plugins are using the same Sandboxie-enforced sandbox structure. But because the design application is running in native Windows, it utilizes the native Windows structure and imposes it on the plugins.

Is there a way for Sandboxie to force that, when a .dll or other plugin file is used in a sandbox, that when the .dll seeks any of its assets, registry settings, etc. that it look in the sandbox context instead of inheriting the overriding native Windows application's file structure?

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DavidXanatos
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:26 am

Re: using sandboxed plugins with natively installed apps

Post by DavidXanatos »

just run the native application in the same sandbox the plugin was installed

there is no easy way to force whyt you want as long as the entier aplication is not sandboxed

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