AppLocker And Applications Which Install In The Users Profile Directory.

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Dec 23, 2023, 5:51:50 AM12/23/23

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This article provides a description of AppLocker and can help you decide if your organization can benefit from deploying AppLocker application control policies. AppLocker helps you control which apps and files users can run. These include executable files, scripts, Windows Installer files, dynamic-link libraries (DLLs), packaged apps, and packaged app installers.

I got lot of vulnerable versions of zoom and WebEx lingering around on our users profile. I run a script to remove them. But users keep installing them and using them whenever they get meeting invite. I do not want to stop our users from using these apps but I would like to stop them from installing them in their profiles and running them but still continue to attend meetings using these apps. I have been looking at AppLocker to block apps running from user profile but it appears it would not just block zoom and WebEx but all apps that get installed in user profile like Onedrive, teams and any unknown apps in the future. Is there a good recommendation on how to go about stopping users from installing apps in users profile without impacting their ability to attend meetings with these apps? Just FYI, we are Microsoft Teams shop but our users deal with different external clients that uses all other collaborative tools .

AppLocker and applications which install in the users profile directory.

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Limit which applications can be installed onto Windows Desktop devices with the Application Control profile. Limiting application installs protects your data from malicious apps and prevents end users from accessing unwanted apps on corporate devices.

To allow or prevent installation of applications on devices, you can enable Application Control to trust and block specific applications. While the compliance engine monitors devices for trusted and blocked apps, Application Control prevents users from even attempting to add or remove applications. For example, prevent a certain game application from ever installing on a device, or allow only specific apps trusted to be installed on a device. Blocked apps installed on the device before the Application Control payload is pushed to the device are disabled after the profile is pushed.

I am facing a quite complex problem and I do not know how to approach it in the best way. In short I need to block access (browse, display, run etc.) to anything outside of the profile/home directory on Windows + block installation and execution of any programs or applications that are not currently installed on a system. Some kind of similar to removing X permission on Linux and read only. This should also include blocking of changing any system system settings like date as an example.

To create a hardened and secure PSM environment, the system must limit the applications that can be launched during a PSM session. To do this, the PSM uses the Windows AppLocker feature, which defines a set of rules that allow or deny applications from running on the PSM machine, based on unique file identities. These rules specify which users or groups can run those applications.

The PSM installation includes an AppLocker script which enables PSM users to invoke internal PSM applications, mandatory Windows applications, and third- party external applications that are used as clients in the PSM.

Run the Automatic PSM AppLocker Configuration Script to set the AppLocker and ensure that PSM users can only run approved applications. This script enables PSM users to invoke internal PSM applications and mandatory Windows applications. The PowerShell script that configures the AppLocker Rules is called PSMConfigureAppLocker.ps1. This PSMConfigureAppLocker.ps1 script file is located in the folder PSM installation > Hardening

To control which applications users can run, use the Windows AppLocker interface or Workspace Environment Management. You can switch between these approaches at any time but we recommend that you do not use both approaches at the same time.

During the restore process, you can choose whether you want to restore rule assignments to users and user groups in your current configuration set. Reassignment only succeeds if the backed-up users/groups are present in your current configuration set/active directory. Any mismatched rules are restored but remain unassigned. After restore, they are listed in a report dialog which you can export in CSV format.

Microsoft continues to develop, update and improve features to monitor and prevent the execution of malicious code on the Windows opearting system. One of these features is AppLocker. This feature advances the functionality of software restriction policies and enables administrators to create rules to allow or deny applications from running based on their unique identities (e.g., files) and to specify which users or groups can run those applications.

As these examples show, several rules are necessary to allow execution of applications from program and system directories while at the same time preventing users from starting code stored in their profiles. The whitelisting mechanisms provide different rule types for this purpose.

The default rules create a set of standard rules that allows all users to run application in the Windows and Program Files directories, and allows administrators to run all programs. This creates the baseline policy, which we can then amend with Deny rules to prevent accessing specific applications.

The configuration given above prevents users from accessing the Windows Store to install applications, but an organisation can still host its own enterprise Company Store to distribute in-house applications to their employees if required.

A Company Store can be established to permit users access to an approved list of in-house applications. If the public Windows Store is enabled, AppLocker can be used to control which applications a user can install.

Windows Applocker was introduced in Windows 7 and includes some new features in Windows 11/10/8. With AppLocker, an administrator can block or allow certain users or user groups from installing or using certain applications. You can use blacklisting rules or whitelisting rules to achieve this result. AppLocker helps administrators control which applications and files users can run. These include executable files, scripts, Windows Installer files, DLLs, Packaged apps, and Packaged app installers.Windows AppLocker prevents users from installing or running applicationsIn Windows 10 and Windows 8.1, Applocker has evolved and lets you block legacy as well as Windows Store apps.How to use AppLocker in Windows 11/10To prevent users from installing or running Windows Store Apps with AppLocker in Windows, type secpol.msc in Run and hit Enter to open the Local Security Policy Editor.In the console tree, navigate to Security Settings > Application Control Policies > AppLocker.Select where you want to create the rule. This could be for an Executable, Windows Installer, Scripts or in the case of Windows 10, a Windows Store packaged app.

After the profile installs, which should be very quickly, go to the Microsoft Store and attempt to install Netflix. The Workspace ONE UEM-managed AppLocker profile will block the installation of Netflix.

AppLocker provides a simple GUI rule-based mechanism, which is very similar to network firewall rules, for determining which applications or scripts are allowed to be run by specific users and groups, using conditional ACEs and AppID attributes. There are two types of rules in AppLocker:

Managed installer is a heuristic-based mechanism and is best suited on devices where standard users are configured. It is also worth noting that managed installer does not cater for applications that self-update, or ones that extract and execute during installation. It also does not authorize drivers. In these cases, a policy must exist to allow them to run.

Windows Applocker is a function that was introduced in home windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2 as a method to restrict the usage of unwanted Programs. Windows AppLocker lets administrators control which executable files are denied or allowed to be run. With this policy, administrators are able to generate rules based on file names, publishers or file locations on unique identities of files and specify which users or groups can execute those applications.

The AppLocker console is ordered into rule collections, which include executable files, scripts, Windows Installer files, packaged apps, and packaged app installers, and DLL files. These collections allow you to easily distinguish rules for different types of applications. The following table lists the file formats included in each rule collection.

To support roaming profiles, you can install Ultimate Suite Business edition into the \AppData\Roaming folder, which will solve possible licensing issues when a user migrates between terminal servers.

Prior to installing applications, it is important to review application requirements such as application dependencies and hardware requirements. After successfully installing applications on image builder instances, make sure to switch users and test applications under the test user context.

User profile customization can be configured on an AppStream 2.0 Image Builder instance. This includes adding and modifying registry keys, adding files, and other user specific configurations. From the AppStream 2.0 Image Assistant, there is an option to create a user profile. This copies the template user profile to the default user profile. After the image is deployed to a fleet, end users who stream sessions from the fleet will have their user profile created from the default user profile. It is important to consider minimizing the user profile size, especially when Application Settings Persistence is enabled. By default, the maximum VHDx size for user profile is 1 GB. Each time a streaming session starts, a user profile VHDx file is downloaded from an S3 bucket. This increases the streaming session preparation time and introduces a risk of exceeding the limit, which will cause a failure of the user profile mount using the VHDx file.