Key Takeaways
- Apple’s help for RCS has lastly gone reside with iOS 18, enabling cross-platform messaging with superior options.
- Finish-to-end encryption for cross-platform RCS chats seems to be within the pipeline.
- GSMA is working to introduce interoperable encryption for RCS chats to make sure safe messaging between Android and iOS customers.
Google Messages is the tech big’s flagship messaging service that gives Wealthy Communications Companies (RCS), full with message reactions, typing indications, end-to-end encryption, and extra, to over one billion users. With the latest rollout of RCS messaging on iPhones with iOS 18, it’s clear that extra Android customers would go for Google Messages to remain in contact with their cross-platform pals — and Google is conscious of that.
Google’s Messages interoperability purpose with iPhones extends past easy RCS messaging capabilities. The tech big has confirmed its dedication to bringing cross-platform end-to-end encryption to RCS chats, extending performance that Google Messages customers already take pleasure in because of Google’s Jibe backend utilizing an add-on for Sign’s encryption protocol on prime of the RCS Common Profile. For reference, Apple’s implementation solely makes use of the RCS Common Profile with out the E2EE add-on.
“We consider that E2EE is a crucial element of safe messaging, and now we have been working with the broader ecosystem to deliver cross-platform E2EE to RCS chats as quickly as potential,” wrote Elmar Weber, Google’s Android & Enterprise Communication Merchandise Basic Supervisor, in a LinkedIn post. “Google is dedicated to offering a safe and personal messaging expertise for customers, and we stay devoted to creating E2EE customary for all RCS customers whatever the platform,” he added.
GSMA leads the way in which
GSMA, the trade physique that oversees the RCS protocol, has individually confirmed that the subsequent main milestone for the RCS Common Profile shall be to introduce cross-platform protections like interoperable encryption between cross-platform RCS chats. “This would be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between completely different computing platforms, addressing important technical challenges reminiscent of key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership,” wrote GSMA’s Technical Director, Tom Van Pelt, in a recent release.
GSMA will doubtless be the important thing to an answer, contemplating that when Apple introduced help for RCS on iPhones, it indicated its want to work with GSMA to develop an E2EE customary that might be built-in into the RCS Common profile, as highlighted by 9to5Google.
Elsewhere, Google itself has plans for integrating the Web Engineering Job Power’s (IETF) Messaging Layer Security (MLS) customary for end-to-end encryption. Google Messages was noticed including strings of code in preparation for the function’s arrival, and in them, one point out of the GSMA has us pondering that the cross-platform E2EE resolution it is engaged on for RCS Common Profile is none aside from MLS:
+g.gsma.rcs.mls.mls-version
The timeline for cross-platform E2EE between Android and iOS gadgets is at the moment unsure, although it being within the pipeline is evident.
