Exempt

Exempt allows trusted traffic to bypass the antivirus proxy operations, but it functions slightly differently. In general, if you’re not certain that you need to use the Exempt action, use Monitor.

HTTP 1.1 connections are persistent unless declared otherwise. This means the connections will remain in place until closed or the connection times out. When a client loads a web page, the client opens a connection to the web server. If the client follows a link to another page on the same site before the connection times out, the same connection is used to request and receive the page data.

When you add a URL pattern to a URL filter list and apply the Exempt action, traffic sent to and replies traffic from sites matching the URL pattern will bypass all antivirus proxy operations. The connection itself inherits the exemption. This means that all subsequent reuse of the existing connection will also bypass all antivirus proxy operations. When the connection times out, the exemption is cancelled.

For example, consider a URL filter list that includes example.com/files configured with the Exempt action. A user opens a web browser and downloads a file from the URL example.com/sample.zip. This URL does not match the URL pattern so it is scanned for viruses. The user then downloads example.com/files/beautiful.exe and since this URL does match the pattern, the connection itself inherits the exempt action. The user then downloads example.com/virus.zip. Although this URL does not match the exempt URL pattern, a previously visited URL did, and since the connection inherited the exempt action and was re-used to download a file, the file is not scanned.

If the user next goes to an entirely different server, like example.org/photos, the connection to the current server cannot be reused. A new connection to example.org is established. This connection is not exempt. Unless the user goes back to example.com before the connection to that server times out, the server will close the connection. If the user returns after the connection is closed, a new connection to example.com is created and it is not exempt until the user visits a URL that matches the URL pattern.

Web servers typically have short time-out periods. A browser will download multiple components of a web page as quickly as possible by opening multiple connections. A web page that includes three photos will load more quickly if the browser opens four connections to the server and downloads the page and the three photos at the same time. A short time-out period on the connections will close the connections faster, allowing the server to avoid unnecessarily allocating resources for a long period. The HTTP session time-out is set by the server and will vary with the server software, version, and configuration.

Using the Exempt action can have unintended consequences in certain circumstances. You have a web site at example.com and since you control the site, you trust the contents and configure example.com as exempt. But example.com is hosted on a shared server with a dozen other different sites, each with a unique domain name. Because of the shared hosting, they also share the same IP address. If you visit example.com, your connection your site becomes exempt from any antivirus proxy operations. Visits to any of the 12 other sites on the same server will reuse the same connection and the data you receive is exempt from scanned.

Use of the Exempt action is not suitable for configuration in which connections through the FortiGate unit use an external proxy. For example, you use proxy.example.net for all outgoing web access. Also, as in the first example, URL filter list that includes a URL pattern of example.com/files configured with the Exempt action. Users are protected by the antivirus protection of the FortiGate unit until a user visits a URL that matches the of example.com/files URL pattern. The pattern is configured with the Exempt action so the connection to the server inherits the exemption. With a proxy however, the connection is from the user to the proxy. Therefore, the user is entirely unprotected until the connection times out, no matter what site he visits.