Strange occurences in Advance Mode application filtering

Today I discovered something very interesting in LnS when I wanted one application to open another application to use the Internet:

I wanted my text editor (Notepad++ - a free GNU text editor) to open a Web link in Firefox. At the time, Firefox was already open and running, and was in the "List of active applications." When I double-clicked the link in Notepad++, I was not prompted whether or not I wanted Notepad++ to allow Firefox to access the Internet. Firefox just opened a new tab and the link got through. Now, normally that's what I want, but I was surprised that I was not given the authorization popup box either way. I decided to investigate and this is what I found:

If I close down Firefox and remove the entries from the "List of authorized or blocked applications" in LnS, and then proceed to open a link in my text editor, I will be prompted to allow or disallow the text editor from opening Firefox. If Firefox is already open, I am not prompted to allow or disallow the text editor from accessing Firefox. Weird!

Another thing I discovered. I tried the steps above using Internet Explorer 7 (removed all entries to Notepad++, Internet Explorer from the list of authorized applications) and clicked a Web link from the text editor. This time I was prompted by LnS to allow or disallow Notepad++ from accessing Internet Explorer, but! before I had a chance to make my decision with the check boxes, Internet Explorer had already loaded the link in a new tab!

I don't know if this is regular behaviour for LnS but I was a little dumbfounded by this. I'm using Look 'n' Stop 2.06 Final with Windows Vista Ultimate, Internet Explorer 7, latest stable Firefox (2.0.0.4)

Can anybody shed some light on this? I'd really appreciate it!

RyanM

 

Hi RyanM,

Look 'n' Stop just check the parent process is allowed to start an application that will connect.
When an already open browser is reused, its process has already been started before by an allowed application and no new process is started. Notepad++ is not seen as the parent of the browser process.

When there is no browser already open, Notepad++ is seen as the parent process and therefore detected.

For the last case, maybe in some conditions a new process is anway started and detected, but finally the initial process is used to get the web page.

Regards,

Frederic

 

Thanks for the reply, Frederic
That definitely answers my question.

RyanM