ActiveX Filtering Overview

ActiveX objects may pose security risks because they can contain code intended to attack hosts and servers on a protected network. You can disable ActiveX objects with ActiveX filtering.

ActiveX controls, formerly known as OLE or OCX controls, are components you can insert in a web page or other application. These controls include custom forms, calendars, or any of the extensive third-party forms for gathering or displaying information. As a technology, ActiveX creates many potential problems for network clients including causing workstations to fail, introducing network security problems, or being used to attack servers.

The filter activex command blocks the HTML <object> commands by commenting them out within the HTML web page. ActiveX filtering of HTML files is performed by selectively replacing the <APPLET> and </APPLET> and <OBJECT CLASSID> and </OBJECT> tags with comments. Filtering of nested tags is supported by converting top-level tags to comments.

This command also blocks any Java applets, image files, or multimedia objects that are embedded in object tags .

If the <object> or </object> HTML tags split across network packets or if the code in the tags is longer than the number of bytes in the MTU, security appliance cannot block the tag.

ActiveX blocking does not occur when users access an IP address referenced by the alias command or for WebVPN traffic.

Continue reading here: Enabling ActiveX Filtering

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