In December, the FBI and CISA, the US cyber defense agency, warned Americans to use fully encrypted messaging and phone calls where they can. But iPhone to Android and Android to iPhone texting may soon be okay.
The issue exposed by the FBI’s warning was the lack of end-to-end encryption within the core RCS technology itself. Google solved this problem by wrapping full encryption around RCS messages sent between Google Messages users. But message an RCS user on a different app or an iPhone, and that encryption falls away. Apple has the same problem. iMessage encryption only works between Apple users, outside Apple’s walled garden it also falls away, notes Forbes.
An Android Authority’s investigation into pre-release code suggests that “the latest Google Messages beta supports MLS encryption, RCS’s next step toward E2EE interoperability across apps and platforms.” The team says “we managed to enable MLS for one-on-one RCS conversations in Google Messages, but we haven’t been able to enable it for RCS group chats yet. This indicates that MLS encryption support could be on the horizon for Google Messages.”
Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today