message security over http

[dieter_b]

How does PA handle message security over http ?

Whereas https secures the communication, message security secures the content.

I would expect PA does not touch http content. But we are having issues with an application that connects to a partners server.

Application throws this error, I guess it's a pretty default .net error:

An error occurred while receiving the HTTP response to http://blabla/blablaConnectorHostService.svc. This could be due to the service endpoint binding not using the HTTP protocol. This could also be due to an HTTP request context being aborted by the server (possibly due to the service shutting down).

Partner says it has something to do with large transfers that get interrupted. I'm guessing it happens somewhere on the firewall.

[dieter_b]

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@dieterb wrote:

Where can I find application specific timeouts ?

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nevermind, found it (Objects -> Applications)

[dieter_b · Accepted solution]

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@dieterb wrote:

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@TranceforLife wrote:

This is how l understand 3-way handshake :0 If you are not using user-id on trust zone please disable this future under the zone configuration

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We heavily use user-id for that zone. But for some traffic, that doesn't matter. User Any solves that problem for most cases.

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Ok, problem is indeed related to user-id: http traffic triggers an NTLM authentication request (if there's no user-ip-mapping) on the firewall. Application did not know how to handle that and resets session.

The trick was to put the client's fixed IP address in the exclude list for user identification for the zone. Not only in the user-id agent exclude list and/or PA user-id exclude list (what most of the time just worked because it was no http traffic).

Now the firewall doesn't ask for NTLM auth and traffic passes fine.

I also found out that it's not possible to disable NTLM entirely, is that correct ? Maybe because of captive portal ?