This is not just useful in confirming and increasing our confidence in the policy we are about to deploy, it can come in very handy later on, when we might need to troubleshoot why an application is being allowed or blocked. The cmdlet not only confirms that Outlook.exe would have been allowed, it also tells us which rule would match and allow Outlook to run. Wasn’t it a little too easy to generate a policy? Can we just check and confirm that we can really continue to use Outlook.exe once we apply/set the policy? Yes, we can! Here is how: Now that we have generated a policy for Microsoft Office12, how about we try to test and apply it? ![]() The generated policy can be conveniently loaded and applied using AppLocker MMC snapin (available through secpol.msc or gpmc.msc). ![]() To save the generated policy, we redirected the output to an XML file. For hash rules, this will group multiple hashes in to a single rule. For publisher rules, this can lead to a fewer set of rules. The “-Optimize” flag provides another interesting feature rather than create one rule for every executable, this flag causes the cmdlet to look for specific patterns and create an optimal set of rules. In the above example, we used the New-AppLockerPolicy cmdlet to generate a policy for Office12 using publisher rules for signed binaries and hash rules for any unsigned binaries it might encounter. Imagine generating all the rules necessary to allow Microsoft Office12 programs to run using a single command line! Here it goes: This cmdlet is most useful to quickly generate a new AppLocker policy from a list of AppLocker file information. Read on: Using the New-AppLockerPolicy cmdlet You might be asking why this is so interesting (the SHA-256 hash of each file is really cool, right? :))? Well, we promise that this does get interesting and useful. This cmdlet can also be used to retrieve AppLocker file information from the current event log or from an archived event log file. In the example, we piped the output to out-gridview to provide an easier visualization of the file information retrieved. The “Recurse” flag tells the cmdlet to dive in to each sub-folder of Office12 while the FileType enum indicates that only Executable (as opposed to scripts, MSIs etc.) should be looked at. for each executable in a folder, it can retrieve the corresponding publisher, path and hash information etc. It provides the very simple (yet powerful) functionality of looking through a list of files, folders or event log entries and extracting the information relevant to AppLocker e.g. This is the most basic cmdlet in the AppLocker family. Now let’s step through each of the cmdlets and see what they do: Using the Get-AppLockerFileInformation cmdlet Go ahead and use the convenient “get-help” command to check out the details of each AppLocker cmdlet. The above screenshot shows the five cmdlets that are currently available. ![]() To get started, just start a new elevated Powershell session and import the AppLocker module and you are on your way … So, in addition to a lot of enhancements in the AppLocker policy enforcement engine, support for testing policies using audit mode and improvements to the MMC snapin for AppLocker policy management, in the Windows 7 RC builds, we have also introduced a set of AppLocker Powershell cmdlets. So, with AppLocker in Windows 7, we have tried to reduce the cost of developing and keeping an allow list up to date. And if this list is not up to date, then applications that are not in the list get blocked, your users call HelpDesk, costs go up and it becomes harder to justify the value of maintaining an allow list. The typical concern about the “allow listing” approach is that it is too hard to build and maintain an “allow list”. Perhaps, you have been intrigued by “allow listing” and have tried to implement this approach to get a control over the applications being run on machines in your network. Applications not on the allow list are blocked by the system. the list of applications that are allowed to run. AppLocker’s management tools are optimized towards creating an “allow list” of applications i.e. Also check out the AppLocker references during TechEd here along with a related video here.ĪppLocker allows you to specify applications that can or cannot run on the machines in your network. Have you tried out the new AppLocker feature in Windows 7? If not, check it out here and here.
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