The effect of customized and user-defined exception pages on access logging and reporting

Products

• ProxySG Software - SGOS

Issue/Introduction

 

In the access logs you can see different response codes for denied web pages, sometimes you can see 200, 302 and 403 for blocked web sites.

This also affects the reporting for these web sites, as in the reporter, you can see these denied web pages as allowed or redirected, which can be misleading.

Resolution

 

This might be caused by a customized exception page or a user defined exception page that will return the following response codes

-          User defined exception or a customized exception page can return response code 200 Ok if you configure it to send this response code

-          User defined exception or a customized exception page can return response code 302 return redirect, if you configure it to contain a logo of your company to be downloaded from web or FTP server

This also might affect the reporting of these web sites, and you will find some reports for denied web sites as allowed or redirected.