Is there a non-installable version of Fiddler, or

Question

One of my clients is currently waiting for his IT department to install Fiddler on his desktop so that he can debug his web application... Apparently his desktop requires IT Admin rights to install anything.

Is there a non-installable version of Fiddler, i.e. a standalone exe (additional files ok) or an equivalent program that can be run off a thumbdrive or a local folder?

Answer 1

No, Fiddler doesn't "Add hooks" that require administrative permissions. You can simply copy the Fiddler folder from the Program Files folder onto the desktop of whatever user you want and launch it directly from there.

The only thing that you don't get in an "XCOPY" install is the Fiddler-related buttons in your browsers (e.g. IE and Firefox) because those are set by the installer, and if you don't run the installer, you won't get the browser extensions.

Answer 2

You may try either Burp ( http://portswigger.net/burp/ ) or Web Scarab ( http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_WebScarab_Project ). Both are written in Java, downloadable as zip Files and don't require admin rights ... but java. If they don't fit you can either try one of the numerous other stand alone web proxys ( http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Phoenix/Tools#HTTP_proxying_.2F_editing ) or a Firefox plugin ( http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Phoenix/Tools#Browser-based_HTTP_tampering_.2F_editing_.2F_replaying ).

If the application is developed with Eclipse: This also has some simple Traffic Monitoring tools

Answer 3

There's a TCP/IP sniffer called SmartSniff that is designed to not require installation.

Answer 4

You may want to try FiddlerCap, which is a light-weight version of Fiddler (using FiddlerCore) in the sense that it captures traffic and saves it to a Fiddler archive. It does require an install by default, but you can avoid that if you:

1. Install the FiddlerCap download on a different machine first. This basically does an extract only. You can simply distribute the files to the intended target machine.

2. Add the FiddlerCap folder on the target machine to the PATH environment variable, because it needs to find FiddlerCore.dll in that folder.

Answer 5

In fact, Fiddler does not need to be installed:

• Download Fiddler setup (ie. FiddlerSetup.exe)
• Open it with your Archive Manager (ie. 7-Zip)
• Open $PLUGINSDIR folder
• Open the contained FiddlerSetup.exe (yes again) in your Archive Manager

• Extract the files in a folder
• Run Fiddler.exe

Updated response since Fiddler setup has changed

Notes

1. Fiddler creates the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Fiddler2 upon launch (see here).
2. FSE2.exe (the executable of FiddlerScript Editor) is created in the main folder instead of ScriptEditor. It can be fixed by moving it there manually.