End-to-End Encrypted Messaging

Book excerpt: This exciting resource introduces the core technologies that are used for Internet messaging. The book explains how Signal protocol, the cryptographic protocol that currently dominates the field of end to end encryption (E2EE) messaging, is implemented and addresses privacy issues related to E2EE messengers. The Signal protocol and its application in WhatsApp is explored in depth, as well as the different E2EE messengers that have been made available in the last decade are also presented, including SnapChat. It addresses the notion of self-destructing messages (as originally introduced by SnapChat) and the use of metadata to perform traffic analysis. A comprehensive treatment of the underpinnings of E2EE messengers, including Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and OpenPGP as well as Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) is given to explain the roots and origins of secure messaging, as well as the evolutionary improvements to PGP/OpenPGP and S/MIME that have been proposed in the past. In addition to the conventional approaches to secure messaging, it explains the modern approaches messengers like Signal are based on. The book helps technical professionals to understand secure and E2EE messaging on the Internet, and to put the different approaches and solutions into perspective.