Using eBPF to see through encryption without a proxy
Hi HN, I'm Tyler Flint, one of the creators of qtap. For a while now, my team and I at Qpoint.io have been grappling with the challenge of understanding what's actually happening inside the encrypted traffic leaving our production systems. Modern apps rely heavily on third-party APIs (think payment processors, data providers, etc.), but once TLS kicks in, figuring out exactly what data is being sent, identifying PII exposure, or debugging integration issues becomes incredibly difficult without resorting to complex and often brittle solutions. Traditional approaches like forward proxies…
Using eBPF to see through encryption without a proxy launched on May 8, 2025 with 259 votes, #113 of 7,905 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
qtap is a lightweight agent that uses eBPF technology to inspect encrypted traffic in production systems without requiring a proxy or TLS termination. It allows developers to see what data is being sent to third-party APIs, identify potential personally identifiable information exposure, and debug integration issues. The tool operates at the application level rather than network layer, avoiding the performance overhead and certificate management complexity of traditional forward proxies.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Qtap: An eBPF agent that captures pre-encrypted network traffic, providing rich context about egress connections and their originating processes. - qpoint-io/qtap
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN, I'm Tyler Flint, one of the creators of qtap. For a while now, my team and I at Qpoint.io have been grappling with the challenge of understanding what's actually happening inside the encrypted traffic leaving our production systems. Modern apps rely heavily on third-party APIs (think payment processors, data…
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