[Ganoes47]

Can someone ELI5 how they actually capture all these data ?

Are they basically cracking encryption ? I thought the kind of encryption provided by VPN services (256-bit AES/CBC) was strong enough? If that's what they do, aren't they violating privacy laws ? Aren't they breaching companies such as Google, Facebook etc... T&C ? Are they installing some kinds of trojans, keyloggers and stuff on 3rd parties computers ? Isn't what they are selling black hat hacking solutions ? Or are they only capturing clear traffic ? which is not necessarily very meaningful.

It says : "extract information about people’s usage of services such as Gmail, Hotmail, WhatsApp, and Facebook"

The latest terms and conditions you had to acknowledge recently to continue using watsapp (yes, I read them!) mentionned that they don't keep a record of the content being exchanged via watsapp. So, is watsapp lying ? Or what does this Endace system records ? Watsapp T&C also say that they use a strong encryption. so, FTW?

[tptacek]

They can't do anything with encrypted data, except (badly) try to detect that it's encrypted in the first place.

[rkallos]

It seems they can only guess at the contents of encrypted packets.

https://www.endace.com/deep-packet-inspection.html