DotW: Blocking Torch Browser to Protect Against Network Abuse

This is Joe from the Palo Alto Networks Community Team and I wanted to take a second and introduce a new weekly feature on our Community:

Discussion of the Week

In each "Discussion of the Week" or "DOTW," we will highlight an interesting and timely discussion from the Community.

Community member ‘Rags’ started an engaging discussion about using Palo Alto Networks to block the Torch browser. Application Blocking

If you didn't already know, Torch Browser is a Google Chrome based browser that handles common internet-related tasks such as displaying websites, sharing websites via social networks, downloading torrents, accelerating downloads and grabbing online media, all directly from the browser. This might sound like a great application to have if you are a power-user sitting at home, but this browser can be a nightmare for network administrators wanting to block unwanted applications.

This brings me back to the discussion thread, which has a lot of great detail on the problem that Community Member Rags was facing and holds informative responses as well as an answer that assisted him in resolving this issue.

Here are a couple screen grabs from the discussion:

To view the full discussion go here:

https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/thread/13131

Thanks for reading. Stay secure my friends.

Joe Delio

Discussion of the week: Monday April 20th, 2015