The Verge: Google is rolling out end-to-end encryption for RCS is in Android Messages beta

[grarpamp]

On 11/19/20, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Verge: Google is rolling out end-to-end encryption for RCS is in Android
> Messages beta.
> https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21574451/android-rcs-encryption-message-end-to-end-beta

https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
https://messages.google.com/#!?modal_active=map

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multimedia_Subsystem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/greatworks/shannon1949.pdf
https://www.governmentattic.org/18docs/Hist_US_COMSEC_Boak_NSA_1973u.pdf

Why google and carriers partners and accounts ever needed for this.
Hook into SMS, do a key generation and agreement protocol, done.
Lots of ways to use SMS and even voice, oob, internet, etc, to get or
confirm a key.
Crypted text over SMS not efficient or fast, but is possible, and
easily put into a simple app.
Even use one time pads, TOTP ratchets, cut and paste into SMS, etc.
Old school still works.

If user has IP on their phone, whether via telco or wifi,
they can use anything they want over that.
Just another motivation for users to drop the iOS/Android
stack and try a Pinephone / Librem, or at least get
a unix laptop and tether it.


For those using phone provided browsers, even Firefox
and even tor variations exist as alternatives...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_Android
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
https://www.torproject.org/download/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onion-browser/id519296448

At least Firefox isn't Google, and accepts donations via Mozilla.