Setting Up the Root Certificate for Electron Applications on Ubuntu

Environment

Description

Q Can I capture and decrypt HTTPS traffic from Electron applications like MS Teams?

Electron applications CA management is different from the operating system CA management used by default by Fiddler. Electron-based applications use Electron CA management, so the folder where the Fiddler Everywhere trust certificate must be installed is in ~/.pki/nssdb. You can capture and decrypt their HTTPS traffic by moving the certificate authority file to that folder and then use the certutil tool to install and trust it.

Solution

1. Verify that your Ubuntu has the certutil tool. Install the tool through the following command:

   Shell

   sudo apt install libnss3-tools

2. Install and trust the certificate with the following command, which assumes that the certificate is already available in /usr/share/ca-certificates/extra. If not, install and trust the certificate as shown in the configuration article, so that you can capture HTTPS traffic from other applications and not only from electron applications.

   Shell

   certutil -A -n "ROOT-CA" -t "TCu,Cu,Tu" -i /usr/share/ca-certificates/extra/Fiddler_Root_Certificate_Authority.crt -d sql:/home/${USER}/.pki/nssdb

3. Restart Fiddler Everywhere and start capturing HTTPS traffic from MS Teams or other Electron-based applications.