Quote:Microsoft announced today that Windows Defender is the first antivirus to gain the ability to run inside a sandbox environment.

In software design, a "sandbox" is a security mechanism that works by separating a process inside a tightly controlled area of the operating system that gives that process access to limited disk and memory resources.

The idea is to prevent bugs and exploit code from spreading from one process to another, or to the underlying OS. A sandbox escape is one of the most complex pieces of exploitation malware, or a hacker can perform, and running programs inside sandboxed environments is considered an optimal security measure and good software architecture.

"We're in the process of gradually enabling this capability for Windows insiders and continuously analyzing feedback to refine the implementation," Microsoft said today in a celebratory blog post.