You manage AOS-10 APs with HPE Aruba Networking Central.

Aruba firewall / role access rules are evaluated top-down, first-match wins; once a rule matches, no later rules are processed.

Let’s walk the packet through the ordered rules:

The traffic is SSH, not UDP/67 ⇒ rule 1 does not match.

Destination 10.1.7.12 is not in 10.1.4.0/23 ⇒ rule 2 does not match.

10.1.7.12 is in 10.1.0.0/18 ⇒ rule 3 matches first.

Rule 3 action: Deny any to 10.1.0.0/18 + log.

Because rule 3 already matched, the later “Deny SSH to 10.1.0.0/21 + denylist” rule is never evaluated, so no denylist is applied.

Aruba documentation for session ACLs and firewall rules explicitly states that rules are evaluated from top to bottom and “the first match terminates further evaluation,” and logging/denylist flags on a rule are applied only when that specific rule matches.

So the outcome is: the SSH traffic is dropped and logged, but the client is not denylisted → Option B.