It’s possible that Google’s Messages software will eventually provide cross-platform chat encryption. The business is announcing the deployment of Messaging Layer Security, or MLS, an end-to-end encryption technology. It will make it possible for Google’s messaging platform to connect and communicate with other messaging services that also support MLS.
Want to send a message to a group chat so that it will instantly and securely show up on recipients’ devices in the chat apps of their choice? Getting IT companies to develop an end-to-end encryption system that enables users to safely message between platforms is the future that European regulators are aiming for.
Major corporations supporting the same standard would be necessary for meaningful interoperability, and it appears that MLS now has one of the biggest ones on its side. RCS, a carrier-backed end-to-end encrypted communications protocol, is also supported by Google. Group chat security was lacking in RCS for a long, but Google is now releasing a version that does (and doesn’t require MLS).
Better encryption for group messages could be a significant issue that MLS addresses. Several popular messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Allo (RIP), might have group chats intercepted if only one user’s security is hacked, according to a 2017 Oxford report. Therefore, researchers proposed a “Asynchronous Ratcheting Tree” that increases the security of end-to-end group messaging, and MLS was created with that concept in mind.
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a standards body, is responsible for creating the MLS protocol. The organization has only recently accepted the release of the MLS specification (RFC 9420), after having tested earlier iterations in Webex and RingCentral chats.
Although Google does not specify a timeframe, it is moving to open source its Android codebase’s MLS implementation. Additionally, it was unclear whether or how the RCS communications, which Google has publicly supported for more than a year, would function with the MLS-based encryption. For not enabling RCS, which is now accessible to more than 800 million Android users, Google continues to humiliate Apple. If other IT firms “get the message” with MLS, that is yet to be seen.
