• jsuisfatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    so you’re saying there’s no way to know if a file is safe or not, i mean there’s very trusted sources in this community. how should we know then?? and is running a vm really safe? what do you mean by hardened sandbox vm?

    • voluntaryexilecat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Oh, of course there is a way. Just open the binary in radare2/rizin/ghidra and look for suspicious code. Of course this is quite time consuming to do this with a binary file, so if you compile opensource code yourself you can at least read the annotated source. If you do not have the expertise to do this, you have to choose who you trust and be careful in general.

      A sandbox VM can be just a Linux or Windows VM that is running on your local hypervisor and properly firewalled and configured for security, or in a container (less secure). If a software goes rogue it will likely infect only the VM (unless it knows a hypervisor escape). Proper virtual firewalling can help protect your home LAN.

      An operating system that helps you do all this without requiring too much manual work is for example QubesOS.