"Capture Traffic" breaks Gmail Workspace's Gmail's Google Chat

[Lior]

As soon as I enable "Capture Traffic", Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)'s Gmail's Google Chat (the Workspace substitute for the free Gmail Hangouts) stops working. It just loads and messages don't go in and out.

 

This is even though my Fiddler's filters are very specific so they don't even show anything related to Google Chat.

 

Workspace's Gmail's Google Chat is a relatively new service. Until recently they used Hangouts just like the regular Gmail, so maybe it's something you've never considered.

Can you please solve it?

Thanks!

[Nick Iliev]

Hello Lior,

 

Some 3rd-party tools utilizing internet access might experience degradation when a proxy is used as a man-in-the-middle (as Fiddler does). So that said, it is a case that is known to happen with some Microsoft products like MS Teams, but so far, we haven't received reports related to G-Suite (Google Workspace). After searching for similar issues, I found out that some users are reporting similar degradation of the services when a proxy is used - for example, refer to this post.

 

You could try to bypass the endpoint used by Google Workspace via the flow suggested here.

 

Regards,
Nick Iliev
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[Lior]

[quote]Nick Iliev said:

You could try to bypass the endpoint used by Google Workspace via the flow suggested here.
[/quote]

Unfortunately, tried writing google.com, googleapis.com and googleusercontent.com in both places ("Tools > Fiddler Options > Connections > Bypass Fiddler" and HTTPS's "Skip decryption for", but it didn't help. Can anything be done?

[Nick Iliev]

Hi Lior,

 

The thing is that probably Google Workspace uses multiple domains to do its work behind the scenes. A similar case can be observed with some Microsoft products (like Teams) where it is not really easy to bypass all domains that are used by the application (mostly because there is no public listing of those domains).

 

Regards,
Nick Iliev
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[Lior]

What about wildcards? Can we use something like *google*.com?

Otherwise it's a problem that Fiddler can't be used without disabling Google Chat.

[Nick Iliev]

Hi Lior,

 

The "Bypass Fiddler for URLs that starts with" option is setting the respective OS setting. For example, on Windows 10, that would be Proxy Settings > Proxy > Manual Proxy Setup > Use the proxy server except for addresses that start with the following entries field. In this blog post, you could see the respective macOS settings.

 

The above said you could use the specific OS syntax to directly bypass the wanted google domains (once the Fiddler proxy is set). That is, of course, if you know what the endpoints in use by Google Chat (not sure that it is using only domains with google inside the path) are

 

Regards,
Nick Iliev
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[Lior]

[quote]Nick Iliev said:

 

The "Bypass Fiddler for URLs that starts with" option is setting the respective OS setting. For example, on Windows 10, that would be Proxy Settings > Proxy > Manual Proxy Setup > Use the proxy server except for addresses that start with the following entries field.

That is, of course, if you know what the endpoints in use by Google Chat (not sure that it is using only domains with google inside the path) are

 

 

[/quote]

But the point is no domain out there starts with Google. They only contain it.

How do I use "contains" instead of "starts with"? While I don't think Google Chat's endpoints are listed anywhere, I assume "contains" has a large chance to succeed where "starts with" fails.

[Nick Iliev]

Hi Lior,

 

The different operating systems are supporting different syntax for the bypass list. From the little information that I was able to access, it looks like that the option "Use the proxy server except for addresses that starts with the following entries. Use semicolons (;) to separate entries." on Windows 10 should be supporting wildcards. So you might try setting your addresses while using a wildcard with an asterisk.

 

Example: *.local The asterisk is a wildcard and means “anything”. So, if you attempt to connect to server.local, database.local, or anything else that ends with .local, Windows will bypass the proxy and connect directly.

 

The Microsoft documentation on the topic is not very much or entirely obsolete, but I could not find anything that resembles contains feature for that field.

 

Regards,
Nick Iliev
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