PPLPM: More security with Combo Rules

Hi. This is Jeremy Moskowitz, and in this video I’m going to show you how you can use what’s called PolicyPak Least Privilege Manager Combo Rules to get even more secure.

You’ve seen me elevate applications by name and by hash, but I want to do it by multiple characteristics. For instance, if you take a look at “Procmon,” we know there’s a name associated with it and there’s also a digital signature. If we take a look at “Digital Signatures” here, you can see “Microsoft” has digitally signed this application. That’s good news for us because we can say only let Procmon run if it has this name and also has this digital signature by that publisher. That’s how we’re going to do it.

We can click “Add” “New Executable Policy,” and we’re going to click “Use combo rule.” “Use simple rule” lets you pick one characteristic, but “Use combo rule” lets you pick multiple characteristics. “Path” is based on the name, and “Signature” is based on the digital signature. There’s a little wizard, and I want to walk through how the wizard works.

The first thing that we’re doing is “Path Condition.” You can see “Path Condition” here is the first thing we’re doing. We’ll click “Add.” I have a copy of this file, so I’ll click “Add file.” I have a version already. It’s here hanging out under “Apps to manage.” It’s called “Procmon.”

Actually, it’s not on my “Desktop.” That’s not where it lives. I want it to live anywhere. I’m going to say let Procmon work no matter where it is, so you could do “*Procmon.exe.” I don’t care where it’s located. Procmon is okay to run.

But I only really know it’s Procmon because it’s actually signed by Microsoft. I want to select “From EXE file.” I’ll go ahead and pick “Apps to manage,” “Procmon.” We can see the digital signature from Microsoft for Process Monitor. These two conditions together when we click “Next,” we’re then going to “Run with elevated privileges.” We’ll say, “Let procmon run when name is procmon and signed by MS.” That gives us pretty strong security.

If we double click here, we can see that we don’t get the wizard view this time. We now get this alternate view. You can see the “Path Condition” here, and we’ve got the “Signature Condition” there. It’s as simple as that.

Let’s go ahead and go over. Let’s prove I’m not pulling a fast one on you here. “Procmon” does not get elevated by default. If we then run GP Update here and wait for Group Policy to do its thing, at that point PolicyPak will have gotten the rule through Group Policy. Or if you’re using SCCM or Altiris or your own management system or PolicyPak Cloud, you can deliver all of our settings those ways as well. We’ll go ahead and close that out.

Now when we run “Procmon,” because we said the name has to be this and the digital signature has to be that, together as a combo rule that gives you the magic you need. That will give you very strong security in a very wide variety of situations.

I hope this helps you out. Thanks so much.