Inspecting Server Certificate

Environment

Product	Fiddler Everywhere
Product Version	3.2.0 and above

Description

The Fiddler Everywhere client captures HTTPS traffic and obtains information about the used server certificates. How can I see details about each certificate and catch potential issues related to expiring certificates or certificate errors?

Solution

Fiddler Everywhere version 3.2.0 and above contain indicators and notifications that show if a server certificate is valid, expiring, or causes errors.

Extracting Certificate Details

Each session that successfully establishes secure connections over HTTPS stores information about the server certificate. Follow the steps to inspect the certificate full details:

• Open Fiddler Everywhere and capture the HTTPS session

• Go to the Response Inspector and click on the Certificate Valid note

  

• Inspect the public certificate in detail. The prompt windows might contain the following sections:

  • Issued to—Contains public information in fields such as Common Name, Organization, Locality, Province, Country
  • Issued by—Contains public information in fields such as Common Name, Organization, Country
  • Validity Period—Contains Issued on and Expires on date fields.
  • Public Key—Contains information about the used Algorithm, Key Size, Exponent, and Modulus.
  • Miscellaneous—Different miscellaneous data like Signature Algorithm, Serial Number, and Version.
  • Fingerprints—Lists the SHA-256 and **SHA-1 fingerprints.
  • Extensions—Addition information about the certificate ppolicies, constraints, usag, distribution points, etc.

  

Expiring Certificates

Fiddler Everywhere explicitly indicates if a server certificate is about to expire within the next 30 days. The indicator is in the form of an orange triangle on top of the session's list icon and as a Certificate Expiring warning note in the Response Inspector.

You can still extract certificate data through the certificate details window.

A trivial use-case for the expiring warning is to prepare the update of the certificates on your servers before their expiration.

Certificate Errors

Fiddler Everywhere will automatically respect server certificate errors (with HTTPS > Ignore server certificate errors disabled by default) and show error indicators. The certificate error indicator is in the form of a red triangle on top of the session's list icon and as a Certificate Error note in the Response Inspector.

If you change the certificate error handling (by enabling HTTPS > Ignore server certificate errors), then the note in the Response Inspector will remind you that the error is ignored.

A typical use case for the Ignore server certificate errors option will be certificate validation errors on macOS while trying to access *.icloud.com domains. Use the option to ignore the validation error and continue the debugging process.