Citrix Gateway 13.0 Registry value EPA scan examples

If you’re having trouble with getting Citrix Endpoint Analysis scans of client device registry values to work properly (on Citrix Gateway) you may come across the following issue I experienced in the latest versions of firmware.

It appears that the EPA scan functionality in the NS 13.0 GUI (this article relates to 13.0.82.45) has been merged so that the numeric/non-numeric registry scan types now coalesce into one type of scan: REG_PATH; whereas in previous versions string values were interpreted using REG_NON_NUM_PATH.

Here’s a screen shot of the new expression editor drop down for Windows client EPA scans

NS13.0.82.45 drop down for Windows EPA scans

In comparison to the previous version (NS13.0.71.44).

NS13.0.71.44 drop down for Windows EPA scans

Here’s a screenshot of the registry scan entry panel where you can enter registry path and value, plus comparison or presence operators. Note the tooltip box which says that numeric comparisons will be done when using <,>,== etc.

NS13.0 registry scan value/comparison entry GUI

The convergence of these two types of scan into one appears to hide a reduction in comparison functionality, which only emerges once you attempt to use a string based registry value comparison using REG_PATH. You cannot use == anymore with string values such as REG_SZ.

This is a quick summary of the new behaviour following my own testing:

Numeric comparisons

Scans based upon REG_DWORD, REG_QWORD, REG_BINARY values will only work when carrying out boolean comparisons on numeric values with operators such as ==, !=, >=

e.g.

sys.client_expr("sys_0_REG_PATH_==HKEY\\_LOCAL\\_MACHINE\\\\SOFTWARE\\\\Classes\\\\YourRegistryKeyLocation\\\\YourRegistryValueName_VALUE==_12345[COMMENT: Registry]")

will result in a successful scan when YourRegistryValueName == 12345.

String comparisons

However when using the newly merged functionality, scans based upon REG_SZ values will only work when carrying out comparisons on string values using operators such as ‘contains’, ‘notcontains’.

If you try to use == as the operator on a string comparison the EPA scan logs will result in:

2021-09-28 09:25:38.883 Boolean compare failed. Value false operator ==
2021-09-28 09:25:38.883 Scan 'REG_PATH_==_HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Classes\\YourRegistryKeyLocation\\YourRegistryValueName_VALUE_==_12345' failed for method 'VALUE'

Therefore modify your EPA action expression to fit the following example using ‘contains’:

sys.client_expr("sys_0_REG_PATH_==_HKEY\\\\_LOCAL\\\\_MACHINE\\\\\\\\SOFTWARE\\\\\\\\Classes\\\\\\\\YourRegistryKeyLocation\\\\\\\\YourRegistryValueName_VALUE_contains_12345[COMMENT: Registry]")

There are several other comparisons which do not appear to work properly, e.g. a numeric registry comparison of a REG_QWORD value which is longer than that allowed by the Citrix EPA plugin BUT is allowed within the 64 bytes of the Windows Registry value.

So my advice would be to consider whether the version of Citrix ADC you’re currently using actually offers the type of scan which you’re intending to use (REG_NON_NUM_PATH, REG_PATH), and NOT to rely upon documented examples without determining if the operator matches the value type correctly.

Further reading

https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX209148 – How to enable client EPA logging/troubleshooting

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-gateway/current-release/vpn-user-config/advanced-endpoint-analysis-policies/advanced-endpoint-analysis-policy-expression-reference.html

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