upx VS Sandboxie

According to this source:

Following optimization, tools like UPX can compress the resulting binary, significantly reducing file size. This compression is invaluable for resource-constrained environments but adds a decompression step during binary execution.

I have been using UPX but I'm quite sure if there's something out there that offers better compression.

Ah that's nice, long ago I used parchment.js to load a inform7 created z5 file on my website. You could try to compress your executable with upx https://upx.github.io/

In this process, the given packer tool embeds a natively compiled PE into another executable that contains the information needed to unpack the original content and execute it. Perhaps the most well known packer, which is not even for malicious purposes, is Golang's UPX package.

Rewrite in C#, and use an obfuscator on the DLL. You can also write some parts in C++ as many variable and function names are forgotten when compiling. You should also encrypt the PCK, and see if you can embed it. If it's embedded, you can make it more annoying to deal with by packing it with https://upx.github.io/

Another good example of false positives like this would be binaries that are compressed with UPX - the way it works is apparently very similar to how stub-loader malware operates and signature detection tools will flag it as malicious.

This will optimise the release binary to be as small as possible. Additionally with upx we can create really small docker image !

Then I compressed it with upx, cp small.exe smallUpx.exe && upx --brute smallUpx.exe, got a 10752 bytes executable, half the size, but still pretty large

I used to use sandboxie so I could emulate multiple browser sessions without worrying about cached creds or the different portals screwing up my context. It works decently.

Use Sandboxie on Windows. It's open source these days, and isolates processes from making changes on your system. It's perfect to install and run potentially unsafe programs. Sandboxie exists since 2003, and yet we still have people in business worlds running viruses from mail attachments.

Sandboxie

You can allow applications inside a Sandboxie to communicate with each other through sockets even when network access by Sandboxie is blocked1. You can enable Sandboxie network access and use Windows firewall outside Sandboxie to block all applications inside the Sandboxie from accessing the network1. It is also possible to specify ports that cannot be accessed by boxed applications2. However, it is not possible to specify IP’s or IP ranges that cannot be accessed by boxed applications2.

In addition to just taking all privileges way from the process, like Chrome does, there's also Sandboxie [1] and the official Windows Sandbox [2]

1: https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie

2: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr...

2b: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pr...

VirtualBox dropped 3D acceleration for old OS like XP a while back, you can see it it running "dxdiag" on your windows XP and running the tests, it will do DirectDraw only since the game is a 32 bit windows game it should run on modern windows like 10 and 11, I saw that the main problem is the DRM, so you will need a "cracked/pached" exe, I can't help with that, but do your own search, if you want to be "safe" you can try running it using something like SandBoxie-plus https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie/releases

With those pre-reqs, is there anything Windows Sandbox can do that Sandboxie can't?

https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie

Could you pls. test if the vulnerability can be mitigated by using Sandboxie-Classic (that is the free version)?

I also want to recommand this piece of small software but it's very neat, Sandboxie: https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie