03-30-2022 02:30 AM - edited 03-30-2022 02:33 AM
Hello,
We're running VM appliance with PAN-OS 10.1.4
I've created custom URL category matching several wcard domain names, that we want to whitelist for only some LDAP users and added security policy placing it above internet access policy for all users (where URL filtering profile is applied to block URLs by predefined categories). We're decrypting this traffic as well. Policy looks like this:
Src zone: Inside facing user networks
Src User: user1/user2/user3 (IP addresses obtained via querying PA user agent running in separate VM)
Dst zone: Outside facing Internet
Service: Any
Application: Any
Profile: None
URL Category: Custom URL category I've created
Action: Allow
This policy matches traffic generated from user1/2/3, but URLs are still blocked and notification indicates them being blocked by default category. Is there anything I'm missing?
03-30-2022 09:01 AM
Are the URLs blocked in the default category, but allowed in the custom category? Something I ran into before is that a URL Filtering Block always takes precedence over Allow, even if the Allow URL is more specific.
03-30-2022 09:26 AM - edited 03-30-2022 11:13 AM
Thanks for the reply.
Yes these URLs matched by custom URL category are blocked in default category assigned to URL filtering profile. But security policy rule, that uses this default category filtering profile is below (after) this specific rule. I've even tried making another URL filtering profile where I allowed this custom category, but even then they were blocked. There is no overlap of regex matches in single URL profile.
If block always takes precedence regardless its security rule position, then I can't understand how to allow portion of webpages to specific users/IPs, while blocking them to others. It's either all allow or all block then...
03-31-2022 01:36 AM
There is an odd thing I've noticed in logs. If this security rule above doesn't have custom URL category attached to it, matched traffic (by source LDAP user) is correctly allowed and forwarded, but once I attach URL category although it matches the URL regex, firewall continues evaluating security rules and finally blocks URL because it's blocked in rule below for all users.
03-31-2022 04:00 PM
So when you define a URL Category it can be used in 2 places:
- a Service/URL Category traffic identifier under a Security Policy
- in a URL Filtering object as an allow/block category (always appears in all URL Filtering objects defaulted to "none")
So you are using your custom URL Category in your specific allow Security Policy, but under the Actions tab of the policy where you set Allow, do you have a Profile Setting with a URL Filtering profile that is actually blocking the connection? Or perhaps the site is also matches a built in category that is set to block in the URL Filtering.
I.e.:
URL Category -> "Example":
example.com/
*.example.com/
URL Filtering -> "filterInternet"
Example: block/block
adult: block/block
business: allow/allow
government: allow/allow
social-media: block/block
Policy -> Security -> "Allow general internet access"
SrcZone = Trust
DstZone = Untrust
Action = Allow
Profile-URL-Filtering = filterInternet <= general block of example.com by category
Policy -> Security -> "Allow specific users to example.com"
SrcZone = Trust
SrcUser = Alice, Bob, Eve
DstZone = Untrust
URL Category = Example
Action = Allow
Profile-URL-Filtering = filterInternet <= still blocking of example.com by category
So, for example, in our environment we block Facebook/Twitter/etc. by default using the build in social-networking category. We then have several custom URL categories where we define some Facebook/etc. domains and a custom URL Filter with those categories set to allow. Then, for a specific set of users we filter traffic in an addition allow rule using the alternate URL Filter. We don't try to identify the target URLs in the Security Policy itself.
Policy -> Security -> "Allow general internet access"
SrcZone = Trust
DstZone = Untrust
Action = Allow
Profile-URL-Filtering = filterInternet <= general block of social-networking category
Policy -> Security -> "Allow specific users to example.com"
SrcZone = Trust
SrcUser = Alice, Bob, Eve
DstZone = Untrust
Action = Allow
Profile-URL-Filtering = filterInternet-allowFacebook <= general block of social-networking category with additional custom URL Category "Facebook-URLs" set to allow/allow
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