We are living in an age when cybercriminal, private corporations and government agencies regularly target unencrypted online traffic. Simply put, a hacker would need to get a hold of your physical device to fully decrypt your messages. The encryption requires two keys and even if the messaging server gets compromised, your correspondence remains completely secure. One of the obvious advantages of encryption is the increased level of security that it guarantees for all our digital communications. Even if the encryption isn’t on when you fire up the app, it usually takes just a few clicks to set it up. Today, almost every messaging service has the encryption enabled by default.
The last thing to figure out is how to implement end-to-end encryption. While this method is easier, it’s pretty much completely outdated and messaging platforms avoid it. This could result in a security breach if a malicious party was to get ahold of the key in transit. However, this approach proved more dangerous because it requires the user to share the private key in some form with the other party. Currently, this is the safest method for two-way encryption. What we’ve just described is also called asymmetric encryption. This process also works in reverse and is repeated whenever Joe and Ellen exchange messages or when they message others who use E2E encryption. Once it reaches her, the private key “unlocks” the contents of the message, deciphering it and translating to what Joe originally sent. If Joe, for example, wants to send an encrypted message to Ellen, his message will first be encrypted by Ellen’s public key. In other words, users keep a private key on their device, while the public key is used to connect with other users. These two are mathematically linked in such a way that the private key decrypts the public one.
Each user needs a set of encryption keys - one public and one private. So how does this encryption work? It’s simple. So even if someone intercepts the messages they wouldn’t be able to read them without the exact decryption key the recipient holds. The days of one key fits all are long gone. The existence of more encryption codes, one for each person in a conversation, allows them to send and receive messages coded in a different way.
But encrypting the communication from both sides ensures that only the authorized parties involved in the communication can access the transmitted data. Telecom companies and internet service providers can scan these messages. While messaging apps always have some sort of rudimentary encryption in place, the data being transmitted isn’t fully secure. E2EE is a method of securing the line of communication by encrypting messages at both ends of the conversation and preventing third parties from accessing the data being transferred.Į2EE differs from standard encryption in that the messages aren’t encrypted just during transit.