Internet vagabonds to be foiled by Gazelle

Microsoft’s planned ‘super-sandbox’ web browser/OS, code-named Gazelle, will provide a “bullet-proof” environment to run potentially high-risk applications, Cyber-Ark said this week.

The security specialist said memory sandboxing, as Microsoft intends to use for Gazelle, is a “highly effective” way to create a secure environment, because “the environment disappears entirely when the sandbox is closed”.

“This is not dissimilar to our segmented approach to storing company critical and private data, keeping access to the main company data completely separate to the private information,” said Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark director in the UK and Ireland.

Fullbrook added that Gazelle’s planned segmented approach to the PC environment will make it much more difficult for hackers to steal data from PCs.

Gazelle mixes together the features of a browser and an operating system, Fullbrook said, giving stronger protection to Internet users from malicious or unstable code.

“When Microsoft reveals the gameplan for Gazelle at next month’s Usenix Security Symposium in Montreal, Canada, there are going to be some very interesting developments,” Fullbrook said.

“Just as our silo approach to storing private data is being adopted by a number of players in the data security space, so we expect the sandbox features of Gazelle to be picked up by the browser software mainstream,” he added.