Tech

Forcing WhatsApp and iMessage to Work Together Is Doomed to Fail


Latest law designed to reinforce Big Tech’s aim to make all your favorite messaging apps work together seamlessly. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, we have some bad news.

Every day, billions of messages are sent using end-to-end encryption. Millions of people use iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal to chat with friends, family, and colleagues, and those chats are automatically protected with strong encryption. But it is not possible to send messages from one encrypted application to another. If you use Signal and your friends just use WhatsAppsomeone has to compromise.

Under the broad union of the European Union Digital Markets Act (DMA), which European lawmakers passed last week and is expected to be implemented this year, owners of messaging apps will be required to make them interoperable if a other companies ask them to do the same. As a result, the biggest messaging platforms — including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage, which the DMA designates as gatekeepers — will have to open their doors to competitors.

“Users of large or small platforms will then be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls on messaging apps, so they have more choices,” the lawmakers said. said in an announcement. Under the plan, Signal may claim to work with Messenger, for example. Or Meta might require WhatsApp to be iMessage compatible — a logistical challenge even if Meta and Apple aren’t actively enmitybut one of the EU legislators thinks the issue deserves to be addressed.

Interoperability advocates say the law will give consumers more choice and will allow third-party customers to build in additional functionality. And while MEPs Andreas Schwab, the DMA’s lead negotiator, says politicians are not looking to weaken encryption, crypto experts fear the proposals won’t be technically viable without affecting encryption. affects end-to-end encryption, potentially injecting billions of those messages. We send each other risk every day.

While end-to-end encryption has become seamless for those using messaging apps, no two apps implement encryption exactly the same. WhatsApp use a customized version of the Signal encoding protocolfor example, but users still can’t message each other across apps. And while Apple’s iMessage may be compatible with SMS, these standard text messages unencrypted.

Many cryptographers and security experts have pointed out errors in Europe plan. “E2EE is Interoperable [end-to-end encryption] Steve Bellovin, one of the world’s leading cryptographers and former principal technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, tweeted on Friday.

“When you start talking about different companies exchanging encrypted communications with each other,” said Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptologist and founder of decentralized publishing platform Capsule Social. , there are a lot of serious considerations here that are extremely difficult to deal with. “It is very likely that there will be a serious deterioration of cryptographic techniques to accommodate this proposal,” said Kobeissi.

Suggestion launched as part of the DMA—Which has yet to be fully released — does not include technical details on how the interoperability works, but officials say the changes will be rolling out over a number of years. Basic features like two-way messaging should be rolled out three months after a tech company is required to provide them; Audio and video calls are valid for four years.





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