WatchGuard has discovered that its internal APT Blocker license issuance process was returning errors in license generation over the course of 20 days in February and March. These errors resulted in invalid APT Blocker licenses delivered to valid Firebox APT Blocker subscription customers.

Anyone who activated a new WatchGuard appliance with Total Security or an APT Blocker subscription between 14 February and 6 March 2018 is impacted. Renewals are not impacted.

Root Cause

It was discovered that the internal license issuance process was using an account that had expired to generate APT Blocker licenses. Our logging infrastructure did not reveal the error to our monitoring systems.

Status and Remediation Actions

WatchGuard has addressed the issue and any new product activations or renewals of the Total Security Service license or Total Security Suite work correctly. Customers that activated the Total Security Service license or Total Security Suite between 14 February and 6 March must retrieve an updated feature key for their device. Learn how here.

If your feature keys were generated with invalid hash you will notice that their APT Blocker license has the following hash:
+7C88469EBE152E9646FD32A24D7BD42E

For example:
Feature: APT@Mar-06-2021;+7C88469EBE152E9646FD32A24D7BD42E

If you are finding that in your feature key for APT Blocker line item then you are encouraged to follow the above outlined steps to obtain your valid APT Blocker feature key. 

Valid APT licenses appear like this:
Feature: APT@Dec-06-2020;+F0C378663B929D92DC44281E4AB205CF1CD4C0A8CD31D7A5C46E868400C779887A08DA521566725BDB6DBCADB3438FAA

Going Forward

(1) Additional monitoring procedures have been put in place to make sure that the license generation process is closely monitored for future failures; and

(2) To remediate any potentially impacted customers we will send a direct communication out to affected customers instructing them to retrieve an updated feature key.

WatchGuard apologizes for this incident and the inconvenience it has caused. Should you have questions or concerns, please contact Support so we can ensure we address your needs.

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