Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- RCS messages between iOS and Android don’t at the moment help end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
- The GSMA voices its help for addressing this by including E2EE to the RCS Common Profile.
- Google has already proven some indicators of preparing for a transfer like that, constructing Messaging Layer Safety (MLS) into its Messages app.
This week has been an enormous one for cellular connectivity, as with the release of iOS 18, Apple customers en masse are starting to speak through RCS, the trendy messaging normal intent on making a feature-rich, degree taking part in discipline for everybody. For Android customers who’ve lengthy felt like second-class residents within the eyes of their blue-bubble family and friends, that is one development that’s been a very long time coming (even when these inexperienced bubbles aren’t going anyplace). However for as momentous as crossing this threshold has been, there’s nonetheless plenty of work to be carried out, and some of the vital messaging options round nonetheless must make the evolution to cross-platform help.
In the event you’re on Android and message one other Android consumer over RCS, Google goes to safe your chat with end-to-end encryption (E2EE), in order that not even your provider can learn what you’re sending. That works for group chats, simply in addition to one-on-one conversations, however Google’s implementation is a little bit of a customized job that exists on prime of vanilla RCS — the RCS Common Profile.
With the intention to get E2EE working cross-platform between Android and iOS, we’re going to want some help for E2EE baked into the Common Profile — and that’s simply what the GSMA, the group behind RCS, says it’s working in direction of (through 9to5Google). Google Common Supervisor Elmar Weber shares some phrases of help on LinkedIn, posting:
…we now have been working with the broader ecosystem to deliver cross-platform E2EE to RCS chats as quickly as potential. Google is dedicated to offering a safe and personal messaging expertise for customers, and we stay devoted to creating E2EE normal for all RCS customers whatever the platform.
With the GSMA and Google each behind this push, our subsequent query is perhaps how this new help may very well be prone to take form. We’ve already been following Google’s curiosity in Messaging Layer Security (MLS), a protocol that doesn’t simply help E2EE between people, however can safe group chats simply as properly.
Messages exhibits indicators of improvement work in direction of supporting MLS on this method, and whereas we’d say that appears like a really strong risk for a way E2EE within the Common Profile may very well be realized, proper now neither the GSMA nor anybody we’ve seen from Google is saying something very particular about these plans.
In all equity, it’s not like we’re taking a step again right here, and messaging between iOS and Android customers over conventional SMS was by no means E2EE protected within the first place. However consumer expectations have additionally come a good distance from the times we had been all texting with T9, so hopefully it received’t be overly lengthy earlier than we see RCS add this extremely requested functionality.
