Unblocking Google Search Phone Widget - Smoothwall

[CPS-Stimmers]

After turning on our HTTPS Inspection we have found that the Google Search Phone widget thinks its offline. I'm assuming its a block however I can't figure out the URL for it, when I try and track it down using the Realtime Web Filter on Smoothwall my Huawei phone is blocking many Huawei domains.

 

Has anyone had a similar issue or has anyone successfully found the URL of the Google Search Widget?

[Norphy]

Does your phone have the Smoothwall's root certificate installed? If the phone doesn't trust the Smoothwall's root CA, you're going to see errors like that.

[CPS-Stimmers]

Yeah, its got the Certificate. Websites work on a phones browser, just not on the Search Widget

[RLR]

We found with android phones it's hit and miss whether it works or not. It will depend on the android version but new versions of android install a work profile so work apps are separate to personal apps. A lot of android apps now use certificate pinning so https inspection doesn't work with specific apps.

 

If anyone finds a way round this or if I've got this wrong let me know.

 

You might find push notifications don't work for some apps. For example, the gmail app.

 

You could try exempting google.com from SSL inspection but then this then makes a lot of SSL inspection irrelevant because key words will not be picked up when they search google.

Edited September 9, 2021 by RLR

[ibpalle]

A lot of applications use pinned certificates instead of certificate validation. This makes them incompatible with HTTPS inspection unfortunately. Only way out for those is finding the target domain and exclude that from HTTPS inspection. In some cases, there are web page based services that will do the same as the app, if HTTPS inspection is essential, those sites can be used instead of the apps.