Google Is Testing End-to-End Encryption in Android Messages | Hacker News Reader

Google Is Testing End-to-End Encryption in Android Messages

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46 pointskelnos54 comments

A lot of people in the comments are wondering how this could possibly compete with WhatsApp, but I don't think competing with WhatsApp is the goal at all here. While WhatsApp is super prevalent across Europe, in the US, most folks are still just using SMS with whatever their phone's default messaging app is. For iPhone users, that's iMessage, and for Android users that's Android Mwessages. There's just far too much inertia on SMS for that to change in the US - everyone's already got a cell phone number that can be used to send SMS messages to, but WhatsApp accounts are few and far between.

And I gotta say, when the person you're chatting with is also on Android Messages, the silent upgrade to RCS has been great. It finally feels like texting in the 21st century. So if Google can start rolling this out as the default experience for US-based Android users, it's gonna make a lot of people happy without them ever realizing it.

This absolutely sucks when you switch OSes and can't participate in your groups anymore.

With imessage pirating OSX will let you connect again (although it's a major pain, and you have to go generating serial numbers and trying to log in.) Is there something like that for Android? Or do you just not get to talk to your friends if you take the sim card out of your old phone.

What are you talking about? SMS has groups.

To be pedantic MMS has groups, not SMS. A distinction I recently discovered when switching to the pinephone which curreently supports the latter but not the former.

mms are also often not included in flatrates and riddled with security problems. noone i know uses them.

no.

what you have probably mistaken for is send to multiple destinations and reply-all.

MMS has groups but imessage and the new android messenger don't use MMS when everyone in the group has the same OS.

So when you switch OSes you get kicked out of the group.

For some reason there are a number of people on hackernews that are really struggling with this idea and I'm kind of surprised it's so difficult to understand. I thought the last guy I talked to was just particularly dense but maybe I'm failing to communicate it effectively? Maybe it's harder to understand than I thought it was? I'm not sure.

My experience with iMessage has been that the group text continues to function as an MMS group if a member switches OS, even if it was an iMessage group beforehand. Or sometimes someone even sends a one-off MMS at a time that they have cellular reception but no data, and the messaging app still seems to know which group text to put it into.

So I guess my experience is that you don't get kicked out of the group.

> This absolutely sucks when you switch OSes and can't participate in your groups anymore.

imo the best reason to abandon every chat service that does not have an opensource client.

Sounds the main issue lies in using iMessage/Android Messages for long-lasting permanent group conversations, which seems like a bad idea. Impossible even, since what social group uses the same OS universally?

I use iMessage for what it works well — short temporary conversations. But if one wants to maintain a community there are far better options. Like Rocket Chat, Slack or Discord.

I think we can reasonably assume RCS is used by Google to attack on both fronts: iMessage in the US and other countries with high iOS penetration, Whatsapp and other cross-platform messenger services in the rest of the world.

But while carriers and Android OEMs might be on board, I don't really see why Apple would bother, short of being forced. Maybe that's part of the strategy.

I see Apple adding RCS eventually without a whole lot changing. RCS messages will still remain green and Apple will continue to offer iMessage specific features that they won't add on the RCS side.

Sounds interesting, seems like they're basing this on the Signal Protocol again. I wonder if the ease of access for this will lead it to replace Whatsapp in Europe, which would just be moving from one tech giant to the next. Is there any chance they'll implement something in Android itself so other apps like Signal can use RCS to send messages?

Doubt people will move from Whatsapp to Android Messages.

Whatsapp is deeply cross platform, which means it captures a much larger fraction of the userbase.

> Whatsapp is deeply cross platform

it requires a smartphone with android, ios or kaios. so, no.

Pretty sure the only one of those platforms that supports RCS is Android (with Google's newly updated default app, rather than any of the many third party SMS apps).

That's true.

how can it be true when almost everyone works on a platform that cannot run it without piggyback to a smartphone?

From the whitepaper it still seems to use RCS for the transport, just encrypting it and using a special mime type. I know that carriers have various RCS apps, but they likely have special access. Cross-carrier apps like Signal would require OS support for RCS APIs.

IIRC there are plans to add such APIs to Android. I've found old threads [0] that it may be included into Android 11 but nothing in the official docs [1].

So maybe it'll be added to Android 12?

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/UniversalProfile/comments/g6r4av/an...

[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/11/features

Interesting, thanks for the info!

At this point, at least for me, whatsapp is less "messenger client" and more "private social media". So the usual network effects and userbase arguments apply.

I don't see myself dropping whatsapp anytime soon given that most my (global) digital social life happens on the app.

So Whatsapp being dethroned by Android messenger is like Google+ taking down Facebook.

Google whitepaper is here: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf

Well, it does not say what kind of metadata they'll be collecting and it seems like they send the phone numbers in plain text. No thanks.

This goes via the phone network and not Googles servers, so you have to ask that question to your phone number provider and not Google.

Why do they bother? Whatsapp can do all of that right now. Has done successfully for a few years. And the article sounds like it would need support by the mobile carriers: being deeply in the pocket of governments, they won't switch on E2E, just like all the intentionally vulnerable crappy mobile encryption. Also, being mobile carriers, they will bill huge amounts per message, making it unacceptable to consumers used to "its hidden in the cost of the data plan".

Oh, and being a Google project: when do we expect RCS to be abandoned?

Chill, let some Google PM have his ego boost and bonus while it lasts, before Pichai McKinseys it out.

Honestly, I don't see an outward difference between this and Hangouts (which is being shut down come December), apart from the end-to-end encryption. Moreover, the Android Messages section is for all the crap I get from nearby outlets advertising their "best deals", or scam artists targeting the vulnerable. I cannot honestly see myself or my peers switching out from Whatsapp to this, especially not when Whatsapp has become a verb in most of the old world. As I've said before, Whatsapp is trusted so much that autocratic regimes such as the KSA, Russia, UAE and Venezuela used it to discuss OPEC production limits. People in all of these countries trust Whatsapp far more than Android, in spite of them being known to be owned by Facebook, and in spite of said people being very wary of using Facebook for messaging (most Arab Spring countries for instance).

> Whatsapp can do all of that right now.

No it can't, this is about sending end to end encrypted messages via the phone network and not the internet. Phone networks have much better coverage than internet providers. Sending E2E encrypted messages via internet is already possible on Google services.

Edit: Or Google might have shut those services down. Anyway, this isn't about a chat app but making e2e the new standard for SMS.

RCS uses the phone network data channel. So more internet than phone in that aspect, it's not at all like SMS hiding in the free space in beacon frames. Therefore coverage won't be any better. The only possible minimal difference would be using authentication via SIM/carrier instead of the Whatsapp method of sending a confirmation code via SMS/call. But that is a very minor difference.

This comment is just full of misunderstandings. Why do they bother? They're supporting a standard the same way they support SMS. So far extra charges are not common and any provider I can find includes RCS in data plan. RCS is not a Google service either so they can't really kill it. I'm not sure why you're so biased against the idea, but posting fud about it is not great.

RCS isn't "a standard", it is a dozen or so. Every carrier does it differently, so does Google, so does maybe Apple. The ecosystem will be fragmented along carrier lines and OSes. And the software is a Google (Android branded, but same difference) thing, so of course they can and will kill it at some point. I'm not posting FUD, I'm trying to point out that RCS is looking dead on arrival. Industry people even said so 5 years ago. All the signs are there. The horse they are riding is stillborn. https://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2015/05/rcs-is-still...

>Why do they bother? Whatsapp can do all of that right now. Has done successfully for a few years.

When people ask why there are so many streaming services, it is as if to imply it would be better for everyone if Netflix had a total monopoly on streamed content.

So to answer you: because not everyone uses Whatsapp and it wouldn't be great to live in a world where Whatsapp (Facebook) has a monopoly on instant messaging.

>being deeply in the pocket of governments, they won't switch on E2E, just like all the intentionally vulnerable crappy mobile encryption.

Whatsapp is not immune to that pressure - by the way. Also, you're way to trusting of the E2E on Whatsapp. You don't control the client-code, so you don't know the myriad of ways a private key can leak out (either by design or accidentally). For example, I'm using the web app of Whatsapp and somehow I'm able to read my entire messaging history - why? Because my mobile app transferred the private key through some mechanism to my web app, passing through Facebook servers.

I'm sure you can explain to me how that can be done securely - maybe there is another key exchange, and WhatsApp messaged are encrypted once, transferred to the phone, and then encrypted again. Either way, your trust of WhatsApps E2E encryption is only as a good as Facebook's corporate polices. So at the end of the day, you are relying on Facebook's goodwill and relying on the fact Facebook doesn't issue a patch that opaquely transfer the key in a future update.

>Also, being mobile carriers, they will bill huge amounts per message

That may be a regional thing. Keep in mind, the world is bigger than America.

Whatsapp is the biggest example, but the same goes for Signal, Threema, partially Matrix, XMPP and Telegram.

Where is the advantage over those? Why should Joe Average use it?

After all, even if RCS will have E2EE, I still need to trust Google to do it right, not helpfully backup plaintext, etc. And all the carriers seem to need to be on board. Let's see how that goes...

Android needs a default SMS client, so might as well enable E2E encryption(or provide the option to). Is it secure? A little, maybe. E2E encryption over proprietary clients, on closed platforms, is as secure as HTTPS, in that, it provides some value but I wouldn't bank on this to protect you from government spying or even police investigations.

SMS is used for 2 factor authentication a lot if I read this correctly once implemented properly. A duplicate Sim card wont work as an attack surface

Just as the Five Eyes, India, Japan and the EU are calling for backdoors in E2EE.

Is RCS supported by iOS phones or it's going to be an Android only thing?

fwiw i would not hold my breath for adoption from apple and this in turn probably means it wont gain any traction.

edit: the rcs spec is over ten years old

I heard it was far easier to hack Android instead, and exfiltrate the decrypted messages at rest, on the local phone itself.

I don't remember exactly but essentially I read about zuckerberg and e2e and something along the lines of "before we encrypt the link or message, we would send a hash for verification and if passed, e2e would be go ahead and sent."

Dont remember if it was something to be done in future or existing tech because there was talks of misuse and this article had come.

I know if multiple Foss apps like Delta chat I think which uses existing infrastructure.

I'm 100% sure both Google and Whatsapp have received nice letters from the NSA ensuring all of their messaging tools have backdoors.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I don't know about the 100% part, but it doesn't seem crazy or impossible that they'll do something like that, and we should all be well aware of the possibility.

He is getting downvoted by the folks who either 1) know this is true or 2) who will deny this is true even if it is true. And I will burn a bit of my karma for this comment too... :-)

You would hope that the NSA would only have tools to collect the messages of targeted users, but seeing their other programs, Id assume they just dragnet everybody.

What's the point when the Android keyboard is essentially a glorified keylogger?

Please Google, stop creating/updating anything related to messaging, you are probably going to replace it with something new anyway in 3-5 years

the spec is over then years old already and not from google. so there is that.

google is just the one to drag their feet the fastest seeing its other attempts to enter the messaging market failed completely.

So... when does this become an anti-patriotic thing to have?

You know, when a country's police can't unlock the phone then convince everyone that a "little bit of a backdoor" is a good thing?

These end to end encrypted systems are subverted through backups that devices put into the cloud in the clear. Officially they are "encrypted" in Android [0], but typically the key is extremely weak so it's easy to brute force. iCloud is officially "encrypted" as well but Apple holds the keys.

[0]: https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h...

It’s scary how few people know and understand all this, and, proportional to the amount of tech we use in our daily lives, how little we learn to use and program our own technology.

I think we’ve got nothing to blame but the digital enclosure of knowledge through patents and copyrights. People aren’t ‘stupid’ at all, they’re disinherited and disempowered, starting at ‘school‘.

Yeah whatsapp kept asking me do you want to backup your chat history so we can easily recover it. To the point it became so annoying i almost deleted whatsapp. I just assume there is no privacy on the internet. If i wanna keep a secret i will keep it in my mind.

I believe that that blog post indicates that Google uses custom HSMs to do the backup pin check to access the actual backup encryption key, ruling out the likelihood (but not possibility) that Google is able to casually decrypt the data.

Google writes and signs the firmware for the Titan HSMs in question, though. I would be surprised if it is actually 100% technically impossible for Google to decrypt backups.

Yeah the HSM idea is good, and it likely helps preventing malicious insiders from hacking user's backups, but I wouldn't trust it as it's not verifiable from the outside.

The other problem, if you try your best to avoid backing your stuff up to the cloud, is that other people will back up their stuff to the cloud.

So, your messages with them, will get sucked up also, and forever saved on the cloud.

What do you have to hide?

If you don’t have anything to hide, then what’s wrong with a little backdoor into your smartphone, so that the “good guys” can help to keep an eye on you, and keep you safe.

-wink -wink

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