Filter Certain Search Strings using URL Filtering stopped working

[HWAAcademy]

We set up a custom URL category proxy-search following the instruction here https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Configuration-Articles/How-to-Filter-Certain-Search-Strings-usi...

This worked fine but recently it has stopped working. Students can now type the search words we block on the list in Google and they can search them, when it worked they would be blocked and sent back to the original google page.

Has anyone else had this problem ? Has the latest update caused this to stop working?

[VinceM]

Hi,

Welcome in tyhe SSL world 🙂

Are you sure that the request is sent in http ??

Do you implement decryption ?

If you decrypt, are you sure your filtering profile is configured on the accurate policy ?

V.

[HWAAcademy]

Hi

We implement decyption, we have the proxy-serach in the filtering profile as an alert..

Would we have to set up a seperate policy in the security section in policies ?

[Brandon_Wertz]

What's the reason you're wanting to block certain things from being searched?  Are they able to get to the sites after the search has been completed?

The KB article you posted references 4.0 / 5.0 / 6.0, but it makes no mention of 6.1 or 7.0 or 7.1.  Did you recently upgrade?

If you're performing SSL interception as described here in 6.0+ using Google Translate and simliar services to bypass URL filtering should not work:  https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Management-Articles/How-to-Block-Alert-Category-of-a-Website-th...

So at least if you're only caring about preventing the content from rendering it should still work.

[Brandon_Wertz]

I just saw...you said you've got "alert" for this "proxy search" function, well that would mean the Google search would be allowed and you'd get alerted to users searching for whatever you've defined in that custom category.  You'd need to change that action to "deny" or "continue" in order to have them presented with a block or continue page.