Block facebook by URL instead of category. Not doing SSL Decryption

[MRosloniec]

Hey everyone!  I have a request from one of my other offices to block access to facebook.  The users there are already covered by a policy using a URL Profile that blocks the social networking category.  I also added facebook.com/ and *.facebook.com/ to the block list for that URL profile.  Users are blocked when going to http://www.facebook.com but if they go to https://www.facebook.com they are allowed access and eventually the facebook app takes over.

How can I block access to facebook by using URL profiles vs. blocking the application?

Thanks!

[pankaku]

URL filtering profile should work. Try adding www.facebook.com in block list. Don't calll anything under Service/ Url Categgory tab in the security policy.

Hope this helps.

[reaper]

Hi

Since SSL encrypts all the http communication, the host header information is invisible to the firewall unless you enable decryption. An alternative method to determin e the URL of a website is to look in the ssl certificate used by the server, and determine the URL from there

since facebook uses *.facebook.com , you should be able to add that  (sans the / ) to your URL filtering profile and be able to block the website

regards

Tom