VMware Carbon Black App Control Windows Agent 8.8.2 Release Notes

VMware Carbon Black App Control 8.8.2 \| 30 NOV 2022 \| Build 8.8.2.1042 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

VMware Carbon Black App Control 8.8.2 | 30 NOV 2022 | Build 8.8.2.1042

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New

This maintenance release resolves several quality issues with the product.

VMware encourages customers to always update to the latest versions of VMware software to benefit from security and stability improvements.

Important:

Important note. Upgrades from versions earlier than 8.1.0 to this version are not supported. We recommend that users wishing to upgrade from those earlier versions first upgrade to agent version 8.7.8 and then upgrade from 8.7.8 to 8.8.2.

Installation Instructions

Important Note. As indicated above, the installer for the Windows Agent 8.8.2 can only be used to upgrade Agents of version 8.1.0 or newer. If an Agent on an older version must be upgraded, the recommendation is to upgrade to version 8.7.8 and then upgrade from 8.7.8 to 8.8.2.

As of the 8.1.4 server release, the Windows Agent no longer comes bundled with the VMware Carbon Black App Control Server, nor does it require manual (command line) steps to add it to the server.

You can upgrade Carbon Black App Control Windows Agents without having to upgrade the Carbon Black App Control Server. Please see the VMware Carbon Black App Control Agent Installation Guide for more information.

NOTE: This Windows Agent is compatible with App Control Server version 8.1.4 and subsequent releases

For information regarding which Windows operating systems are supported in this release, please review the respective Windows Agent OER:

Resolved Issues

The following issues were resolved in this release.

EP-13980: Adjusted process image analysis to allow other processes access to the CPU resources so that the agent thread is not monopolizing resources (EA-16363, EA-19485)
EP-16021: Changed the method used to process user specific rules in order to improve performance
EP-16154: Fixed an issue that caused health alerts to be reported by an agent installed on a computer using a non-standard code page
EP-16206: Normalize network paths to DFS path rather than physical server path (EA-21108)

Microsoft changed the behavior of Distributed File System (DFS) paths in Windows Server 2019 and above. In previous versions, DFS paths were returned with the DFS path. In later versions, the physical server name was returned. DFS path names are now correctly handled for later versions of Windows Server.
EP-16404: Disconnected file instance objects can cause duplicate entries in the agent file instance table

Fixed an internal error reported by the agent when file instance information is sent to the database but the file is deleted prior to the information being stored. This can result in a record in the agent database without a corresponding record in memory. If the same file arrives on the endpoint again, it could result in a duplicate entry in the agent database.
EP-16611: Corrected handling of destroying objects in memory that could have caused memory leaks
EP-16612: Corrected handling of destroying objects in memory that could have caused memory leaks
EP-16800: Fixed an error during agent upgrade that would not complete the upgrade and would leave Windows Installer running (EA-21664)

Known Issues

EP-1201: On Windows 2003 x64, you may see a health check reporting improper classifications immediately after installation

This should go away after roughly fifteen minutes.
EP-5483: The agent currently tracks all the extracted content from the Windows 10 WIM image in the temp directory

A rule to ignore these writes is not yet functioning properly.
EP-1682: Carbon Black App Control does not support in-container enforcement

Users can use the Microsoft Edge Virtualization feature, but Carbon Black App Control will not enforce rules within the container. It will, however, enforce rules on anything that breaks out of the sandbox.
EP-2393: The appearance in the console of block and report events related to the Ransomware rapid config may be delayed by a minute or more
EP-5498: In some cases, the agent will report an empty installer for a given file

The file will still be correctly approved or not, as expected on the endpoint. Only reporting of the source installer is failing, not enforcement of relevant rules.
EP-6104: Cleanmgr.exe is a windows utility process that runs occasionally and will copy files to the "temp" folder in order to run analysis on them

These files are only copies of other files already on the machine and cleanmgr.exe never executes them.
EP-6106: An installation of a new Carbon Black App Control Agent on the latest version of Windows 10 can result in a health check error due to a miscalculation of how many events the agent should send to the Carbon Black App Control server

This problem disappears after a reboot.
EP-6107: After upgrading agents on Windows XP systems, it is possible to see signature error events stating that the installer download failed

The upgrade should be successful and there should not be any impact on the upgrade process.
EP-6197: Occasionally the agent will complain about metadata not being properly populated and trigger an Error

The Error implies a mismatch in expectation but is not expected to break functionality of the agent and can be ignored.
EP-6982: Carbon Black App Control does not support NTFS reparse points as exclusion paths and they should not be used with kernelFileOpExclusions configuration rules

Reparse points include such objects like symbolic links, directory junction points and volume mount points.

EP-10542: When uninstalling the agent, a Carbon Black App Control Agent dialog displays informing the user that certain applications must be closed before continuing the installation

This informational message is caused by a known msiexec defect.

Important: This could occur during a removal of the agent using "add/remove programs" or during an upgrade of the agent if you are using 3rd party software or a manual upgrade using msiexec. Customers that perform agent upgrades from within the Carbon Black App Control Admin console are not affected. When uninstalling the agent or performing a manual upgrade, or upgrade using 3rd party software, you can suppress this dialog with the additional msiexec command line argument "/qb-". This will disable modal dialog during manual uninstalls and upgrades.

Important: This could occur during a removal of the agent using "add/remove programs" or during an upgrade of the agent if you are using 3rd party software or a manual upgrade using msiexec.

Customers that perform agent upgrades from within the Carbon Black App Control Admin console are not affected.

When uninstalling the agent or performing a manual upgrade, or upgrade using 3rd party software, you can suppress this dialog with the additional msiexec command line argument "/qb-". This will disable modal dialog during manual uninstalls and upgrades.

The example below shows how to manually uninstall the Carbon Black App Control agent with the /qb- argument:

msiexec /x {9F2D4E59-0528-4B22-B664-A6B0B8B482EE} /qb-

This issue is not new to the Windows agent and possibly affected customers on earlier releases. A long term fix will be implemented in a future release.