Secure Folders to protect folders (and use as anti-executable)

I might add Secure Folders and it's dependable (depending on results) proprietary driver ALSO utilizes a HIDE feature. Although i rarely ever used it i like to believe that a dropped file extension changer (like ransomware) "might" would not see it at all in Hidden mode. An entire Hidden Folder of Files too. Anybody tested it that way?

 

BTW, does anyone know what the Read-Only protection in Secure Folders exactly does? For example, I have protected the Firefox profile folder, and Firefox is not a trusted process (as test), and it still continues to work just fine? Only if I mark the profile folder as Locked, then Firefox stops working, which is logical. Any ideas?

 

BTW, my bad. I noticed that I didn't select the right Firefox profile folder. It's located in:

If this folder is set to read-only or locked and Firefox is not trusted, it can't function. In other words, Secure Folders really works as advertised and should make it quite hard for infostealers to steal cookies and password stored in the browser profile folder.

 

Tight as a drum on this end

 

However, I still don't understand one thing. I noticed that when a folder like Downloads is locked, then somehow .exe files can't run inside them, even when those .exe files are marked as trusted. It seems to be a bug in Secure Folders.

 

That may be @Rasheed187 - And because of it or despite, Secure Folders has guarded perfectly a collection of the worse malwares. viruses, you name it that i still keep in a folder with folders and no amount of clicking on them or pathway reaches bypass SF. Most are probably relics by now but enough would alarm any AV in a an instant if reactivated.

Secure Folders is been a Great Program even as abandonware. On my Windows 10 too!

 

this became my favorite tool today

 

You may not like it so much when it starts blocking all kinds of programs it shouldn't.

 

No problems so far.

 

Oh that's definitely not good. Could you elaborate on this please?

 

Nevermind, I'm an idiot, I was thinking of Controlled Folders.

 

Yes, it's almost too aggressive. Because trusted should mean that a process should have full access, so it's still a bug.

You already explained that you meant Controlled Folders, but the key with Secure Folders is to make certain apps trusted, so that only those apps can access and modify files in protected folders.

 

Since Hide Folders (now version 6.0) is what's being discussed here, has anyone used both that and Secure Folders 1.0.0.9? Which do you prefer? Hide Folders v6 is $40 whereas Secure Folders is older yet free. They both seem to have similar features. Right now I think I'm leaning towards Hide Folders.

 

...and MyLockbox (from FSpro as well... and FREE) offers a single folder version of "Hide Folders."

 

One thing I noticed was that FSPro Labs Hide Folders offers 5 protection methods, whereas MyLockbox only offers hide&lock. Meaning, I wouldn't even be able to see the image file and verify it's size without disabling protection. With Hide Folders I can see the files while still protecting them from being altered or deleted.

 

Both are pretty good. Secure Folders has a bug that makes it keep blocking trusted apps from getting access in certain cases though. I use them both because I don't want certain trusted apps to be able to access certain folders. In other words, certain folders are protected by Secure Folders, and certain with Hide Folders. You can also make both of these apps protect the same folders, without any problems.

 

One thing I noticed is that SecureFolders might not be as, well, secure as a lot of people think. There's a multimedia application I use that insists on creating database backups in my documents folder. It was able to create an empty directory there where is wants to make its database backups, even though my documents folders is secured in SecureFolders as read-only. It might not be much, but it's a chink in the armor nonetheless. Since SecureFolders is not updated anymore, this issue won't be resolved and makes me question its effectiveness.

 

The single most issue that i don't like about Secure Folders despite it's solid performance is it doesn't let you the user select BOTH the Read-Only AND No Execution. For me it performs fine per single selection but best security would be a setting for ReadOnly & NoExecution BOTH.

When you select LOCKED the files Vanish just like the Hidden selection in Windows 11.

 

BTW, can you give some more info about this? So was it also able to create files inside this empty folder? I wonder if it's a flaw in Secure Folders (SF) or if it's perhaps the way that Windows works.

Like I said, I've tested SF against password recovery tools that try to access the browser profile folder, and it successfully blocked them from doing so. I'm not sure how it will perform against ransomware, I vaguely remember that Cruelsister performed a test and I believe it blocked them from encrypting the Documents and Downloads folder, but I must look this up.

 

I've never seen a secure folder program or feature that I was not able to defeat. Keep backups and keep critical files in an offline copy.

 

I've had little trouble or issue with letting Secure Folders (abandonware) simply act as a guard shack for some now really old malwares from possible execution accidently.

However @xxJackxx your results and experience over time fairly mirrors my own. It's definitely NOT a cure all by any stretch and a solid regular backup plan is always the best bet.

To @Rasheed187's points of interest about Secure Folders. I can't help but wonder why some vendor hasn't bothered to lay claim to the source code where it might could have been much better modified as a standalone than what's left of it now.

 

It is indeed kind of weird that AV's are not focused more on file/folder protection. It should easily protect against certain types of ransomware and infostealers.

I'm guessing you're talking about when you have physical access to PC's? Then yes, but I do think that these type of tools can protect against stuff like infostealers. Don't forget, most infostealers aren't even that advanced, they simply search for files/folders on disk. So they don't make use of fancy stuff like code injection/process hollowing.

 

hi
beautiful tool , i remember some tools like secure folder
one was paid like Folder Guard and another free
but does it protect by users or malware?
is there a malware test ?

 

Like I said, it should be able to block certain malware like ransomware and infostealers from getting access to data. But it all depends on how advanced this malware is. For example, some of them might use code injection which will allow them to abuse trusted tools like explorer.exe (Windows Explorer) to still get access to data. See links for more info.

https://bufferzonesecurity.com/ransomware-2-0-new-paradigm-old-purpose/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ware-protection-bypassed-using-dll-injection/

 

hi
nice links
thanks