Dangerzone

Keeping your computer safe and secure is paramount, and it's understandable enough that some workflows are more prone to malware threats that destabilize and put one's system in danger. If your duties involve downloading lots of files from the internet and working with them, the possibility of one such file being infected, however low it may be, is never zero.

Email attachments can be especially troublesome to deal with, and this is specifically referring to correspondence from unknown sources. Dangerzone is a tool to help users deal with those attachments securely: it scans and converts any received documents in a sandbox, effectively turning a potentially dangerous document into a safe-to-use one.

Though scanning email attachments should be mandatory, it's a step that is easy to overlook. This is a utility that doesn't just scan an attachment — it also converts a potentially dangerous item into one that is devoid of any malware. It doesn't just apply to email attachments, though, as you can feed any document or image into the tool, and it'll make quick work of cleaning it.

The way the software does this is quite clever. It creates a bespoke sandbox for scanning and cleaning duties, converting suspicious items into malware-free ones by way of raw pixel data conversion. The tool uses more than one sandbox for this duty, which is why Docker must be present and running on your computer.

Aside from cleaning a document, the program is also capable of compressing it to a more manageable size. This is done automatically, and is a welcome addition.

OCR functionality is also present, and through it, the tool can use optical character recognition for the just-cleaned documents to grant them a text layer, which can then be manipulated by the end user as they see fit.

Dangerzone is a worthwhile tool to try to secure your computer from suspicious documents and images. Though you may not be dealing with infected files in reality, your peace of mind is at least worth that much.