Thanks Bob!

Dave

From: Free, Bob [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 1:38 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: GPO to block chrome.exe

David-

After I made that comment yesterday about google not necessarily giving end 
users the final say because they had offered some administrative tools for 
enterprises to control the toolbar in the past, and seeing Bonnies's comment 
about blocking the installer I got curious and went to look if those tools were 
still available and if they had offered anything else for all the apps that 
have appeared since I used the toobar template for our GPO  3 or more years ago 
so I googled google :).

 Turns out they still have the original Enterprise kit for toolbar and do have 
some later stuff for the newer apps.
Toolbar Enterprise Guide http://desktop.google.com/enterprise/adminguide.html 
(can't verify the url but that's what our websense is blocking so I think it 
still good)
Installer/Updater 
http://www.google.com/support/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146164
"Google provides an Administrative Template that defines policies for Google 
Update/Google Installer. You can apply Google Update policies by loading the 
Administrative Template into the Group Policy Editor of your choice."
IIRC- One thing that could be done with the toolbar was to block the CLSID of 
the installer itself, we implemented that with the GPO and some rules in 
websense and the security guys were happy with the solution. There may have 
been one other element to the solution as it was quite some time and my 
recollection is fuzzy  ago but the end result was that the toolbar was blocked 
to their satisfaction.
I don't know how comprehensive the newer one is but I did see chrome mentioned 
in a cursory glance.
C:\DATA\GPO\ADM>findstr /I chrome *
GoogleUpdate.adm:        CATEGORY !!Cat_GoogleChrome
GoogleUpdate.adm:            EXPLAIN !!Explain_InstallGoogleChrome
GoogleUpdate.adm:            EXPLAIN !!Explain_AutoUpdateGoogleChrome
GoogleUpdate.adm:        END CATEGORY  ; Google Chrome
GoogleUpdate.adm:Cat_GoogleChrome=Google Chrome
GoogleUpdate.adm:; Google Chrome
GoogleUpdate.adm:Explain_InstallGoogleChrome=Specifies whether Google Chrome 
can be installed using Google Update/Google Installer.\
/snip

From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 11:46 AM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: GPO to block chrome.exe

Yeah, I was afraid that all that was the case. Servers are not R2, no roaming 
profiles, so I am largely out of luck unless I want to do more work than is 
really worthwhile at the moment.

From: Miller Bonnie L. [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 11:14 AM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: GPO to block chrome.exe

If you are talking about a software restriction policy value that you've added, 
it will only block the ability to run chrome.exe out of that location you've 
specified-it does not filter out the actual file from existing on the system.  
The hash block is also going to only work on that specific version, and you 
could run into versioning issues as upgrades are released.

WS03 R2 or higher has File server resource manager (part of the R2 quota 
tools), which can be used to add file screens, but that won't work on a local 
workstation (it's possible they've added something with Vista and up that I'm 
not aware of-probably worth searching).

If these are roaming profiles, FSRM file screens could prevent it saving back 
to the server, but we've had all sorts of grief with that type of setup-you're 
better off blocking the installation application or locking down rights to 
install in the first place.  If that's not an option, you might be looking for 
something third party.

-Bonnie

From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2009 10:53 AM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: GPO to block chrome.exe

I have a GPO with a path value blocking %userprofile%\Local 
Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe, but it doesn't 
seem to be working. Running the modeling wizard I see the GPO is applied to the 
correct system. I also see chrome.exe seems to exist in all sorts of "Local 
Settings\Temp\chrome_nnnn" locations, what's up w/ that?

I also have a hash value block of the .EXE (well, one version of them) in the 
same GPO.

I need to block the app (please don't get me started at blocking the install on 
the first place...one step at a time here).

Ideas?
David Lum // SYSTEMS ENGINEER
NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION
(Desk) 971.222.1025 // (Cell) 503.267.9764




















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