To record HTTPS traffic, you must trust the StresStimulus recording certificate in the Current User store. This should be done once per machine user. Once trusted the certificate can be viewed in the Current User\Trusted Root Certification Authorities section.


There are several ways this can be done.

During Installation


During installation, the installer will prompt to trust the StresStimulus root certificate. Tick the Install StresStimulus certificate for standalone version checkbox and click Next. 

A Windows confirmation dialog will appear next, where you can confirm that you trust the root certificate upon which it will be added to trusted Certificate Authorities.


Suppose you are also installing the StresStimulus Fiddler addon. In that case, you can also install the Fiddler Certificate root by ticking the Install Fiddler certificate for add-on version checkbox. You will get another Windows confirmation dialog to confirm trusting the certificate.


In the Application


If you choose not to trust the StresStimulus root certificate, you can trust it inside the StresStimulus application.

In the StresStimulus menu go to Options > HTTPS... In the dialog, tick the Enable testing over HTTPS checkbox. The same Windows confirmation dialog will appear as above. Click Yes to trust the StresStimulus certificate.


Manually Enabling HTTPS


Sometimes the above two methods may not work for various reasons, including security settings. If this is the case, your HTTPS traffic will not be captured. To fix this issue, the certificate trust should be enabled manually.

First, you need to export the StresStimulus root certificate. In the StresStimulus main menu, go to Options > HTTPS... to open the HTTPS options dialog.

Click the Export Root Certificate button and, in the save file dialog, provide the certificate save location.


Open Internet Explorer and in the main menu, go to Tools > Internet Options.

In the Internet Options dialog, select the Content Tab and click the Certificates button.


In the certificates dialog, select the Trusted Root Certification Authorities tab and click the Import... button.


Follow the certificate wizard. In the second step, specify the file path of the previously exported certificate. Click next until the wizard completes the import.



If you are using Firefox browser for recording, then click here to see how to enable HTTPS in Firefox.

Troubleshooting certificate errors

If certificate errors occur during recording, try these troubleshooting options:

  1. Check the Store website certificates checkbox to cache the auto-generated website certificates for recording. By default, these certificates are auto-deleted. 
  2. Check the Use wildcard names checkbox for wildcards host names in the website certificates Subject fields. By default, the website certificates use the full hostname in the Subject fields. 
  3. Click the Reset All Certificates... button to re-trust the StresStimulus root certificate and clear the website certificate cache.

Client certificates

StresStimulus supports recording applications that require a specific client certificate.

The client certificate must be in the form of a .cer file and copied to the following destination:  % USERPROFILE % \My  Documents \Fiddler2\ClientCertificate.cer

Obtaining the .cer file from the installed certificate

The .cer file can be obtained by exporting the client certificate from the personal certificate store.

To open the current user store, navigate to Start > Run (Start + R) > type certmgr.msc

Right-click on the client certificate > All Tasks > Export... to bring up the export wizard


Obtaining the .cer file from another certificate file

If the certificate is not currently in your certificate store, but you currently have a file (like .p12 or .pfx), then first install the certificate into the personal certificate store 

To open the current user store, navigate to Start > Run (Start + R) > type certmgr.msc

Right-click on Personal folder > All Tasks > Import... to bring up the import wizard

Once imported, use the technique described above to export it into .cer format.

Client Certificate Authentication

For more on recording with client certificates, see this Fiddler article.

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