Adobe Flash Player download fails through proxy

Products

• ProxySG Software - SGOS

Issue/Introduction

Adobe applications downloaded from adobe.com use the user-agent ="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)", which looks similar to a legitimate browser request; however, it is not and the download request gets stuck in authentication loop through the proxy. The application doing the download does not support authentication and this can cause the proxy to get into an authentication loop where the download application sends download requests and the proxy requests authentication for each of them.

 

Workaround:

Bypass authentication for this user-agent string for the adobe.com domain by using the following CPL in the proxy.

1. Launch and log into the Management Console on your ProxySG.  The URL for the Management Console is https://<ip.address.of.proxysg>:8082/ .
2. Click Configuration tab > Policy > Policy files > Policy files tab. 
3. In the Install policy section, select Install Local File from: Text Editor. 
4. Click Install.
   If this is a new proxy deployment, your local policy may be blank. 
   If this is an established proxy with local policy, scroll down to the bottom of the data contained in the text editor.
5. Copy and paste the following policy text:
    <Proxy>

   request.header.User-Agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" url.domain="adobe.com" authenticate(no)

6. Click Install.
7. Click OK.
8. Click Close. 
9. Click Apply. 
   The new policy is installed.