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Application Control - Blocking Unlisted Applications and Not Logging in Central

Hey Guys,

I have noticed a handful of times recently that we have had Sophos blocking certain applications from running due to Application Control policies.

The interesting thing is that three in particular were not listed in Sophos Central as a "controllable" application and nor did it log these as being blocked in the event log. However, reviewing the local log on the endpoint it states that the application was being blocked due to Application Control policy.

The only way to resolve this is to create a scanning exclusion for the EXE until the new Application Control Request is processed through Sophos.

Anyone else experience this?



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  • What were the blocked application names?

    Regards,

    Jak

  • The three recent were:

    AdobeARM.exe

    OfficeClickToRun.exe

    VIPUIManager.exe (Symantec VIP Access)

  • For the first 2 application (as I have those), using the command line scanner SAV32CLI (\Program Files (x86)\Sophos\Sophos Anti-Virus) specifying the "controlled" switch, to see if it's detected by application control (AppC):

    sav32cli -controlled "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\AdobeARM.exe"
    'AppC/AdARM-A'

    sav32cli -controlled "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeClickToRun.exe"
    'AppC/MSOCtR-A'

    SAV.txt, following a scheduled scans will all applications set for detection:

    20170506 141023 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\AdobeARM.exe" of controlled application 'Adobe Reader and Acrobat Manager' (of type Document viewer) has been detected.

    20170506 140952 File "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeClickToRun.exe" of controlled application 'Microsoft Office Click-to-Run' (of type Office suite) has been detected.

     

     

  • Jak,

    Thank you for sharing this, I will keep the cli scanner in mind next time I need to troubleshoot this type of thing.

    However, at the time of the issue, these programs were not available in Sophos Central as a "controllable" application. That is why I was curious if anyone else had experienced this. We would all of a sudden receive notifications that an application has been blocked due to a policy (Adobe ARM), yet reviewing Sophos Central showed that Adobe ARM wasn't even on the list leaving me no way of allowing the app. The only way to get around this was to add a scanning exclusion for the exe until the Application Control Request was processed by Sophos.

    I hope this makes sense...

  • Hi,

    The only thing I can think, is that you have the following option selected for the categories you received detections for:

    "NEW APPLICATIONS ADDED TO THIS CATEGORY BY SOPHOS"

    It's at the bottom of the application list on the left.

    As soon as the virus data is updated at the client that includes detection of the file that would detect the app and they would be blocked/alerted on.  

    It wouldn't need a policy to enable it.  So I guess it's possible that you may gave detected an application before the feed that feeds the policy is updated.

    I would be cautious of using the "NEW APPLICATIONS ADDED TO THIS CATEGORY BY SOPHOS" option unless it's a category you know you would never want any apps in it to run.

    AppC blocking as part of realtime/on-access scanning does use the on-access element so a file exclusion for the detected application would exclude it.

    Regard,

    Jak

Reply
  • Hi,

    The only thing I can think, is that you have the following option selected for the categories you received detections for:

    "NEW APPLICATIONS ADDED TO THIS CATEGORY BY SOPHOS"

    It's at the bottom of the application list on the left.

    As soon as the virus data is updated at the client that includes detection of the file that would detect the app and they would be blocked/alerted on.  

    It wouldn't need a policy to enable it.  So I guess it's possible that you may gave detected an application before the feed that feeds the policy is updated.

    I would be cautious of using the "NEW APPLICATIONS ADDED TO THIS CATEGORY BY SOPHOS" option unless it's a category you know you would never want any apps in it to run.

    AppC blocking as part of realtime/on-access scanning does use the on-access element so a file exclusion for the detected application would exclude it.

    Regard,

    Jak

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