Blocking youtube ads - nice regex in UTM forum

The XG does not allow you to use regex in any method of blocking.  It only supports substring matches.  Please take a look here for more information.

https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/127270

Hi Micheal,

thank you for the link. Basically what you are saying is there is no way to search within a URL in general on the XG like there is on the UTM. To be effective you would have to create a policy for all urls?

I do use the url blocking.

Ian

Hi Ian,

The UTM supports two methods:  You need to go into a policy, then the "always block these sites" and put in regex.   Or you can go to Websites and recategorize/tag a website, and then in the policy choose what do to with the category/tag.

In the XG, only the latter is supported.  There is no whitelist/blacklist directly in the policy.  Instead you create a Custom Category / URL Group object then in the policy say whether you want to allow or deny it as a whitelist/blacklist.

Differences:  XG forces you to create an object and reuse it, while UTM you can put things directly in policy.  UTM supports RegEx and XG does not.  UTM has "change the category" and "tag" while the XG has "add a category" and "URL group" that do more or less the same thing.

Or maybe I'm not understanding the issue.

Hi Micheal,

let me try by asking for a practical example. Blocking videos in youtube requires a search within a url string, the regex does that, how do you achieve the same action the XG?

Ian

Hi Micheal,

let me try by asking for a practical example. Blocking videos in youtube requires a search within a url string, the regex does that, how do you achieve the same action the XG?

Ian

Create a custom category called "Blocked videos".  Use the "keyword" field which does a substring match anywhere in the URL.  Put in the thing you want to block.  In your policy create a policy rule at the top which sets all Blocked videos to be blocked.

The only thing is the custom category keyword is substring match, no wildcards.  The equivalent in the UTM is RegEx.  Exactly how the matches is documented in https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/127270

The regex that started this all is something that looks for pageid= with certain formats anywhere in the url.  That is not possible in XG.

But if you wanted to block: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You could put in
dQw4w9WgXcQ
/watch?v=
/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You just cannot use RegEx.