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panicnow@lemmy.world 9 months agoWhy do you need to control both ends for E2EE? Both ends need a public and private key to encrypt and decrypt messages. You need a method of key exchange. I would prefer to have an offline method (phone call, in-person) of validating a key (like iMessage and Signal have). But I don’t see a reason to need to control both ends.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Probably because different messaging platforms have different opinions on how to implement encryption, and those opinions are baked into their infrastructure at a pretty low level. If two platforms don’t support a common encryption system, the only way to move traffic between them is to decrypt and re-encrypt the data at the boundary between platforms, giving both platforms access to the unencrypted messages.
Mandating a common system for E2EE seems like a good step 2, but just getting them to exchange messages at all is a good first step that doesn’t require anyone to change their backend to support a different encryption mechanism.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
If there’d be a way to use FBM with alternative client - one could use OTR.
panicnow@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I agree that decrypt/encrypt is bad—it is simply not E2EE. The solution would have to be a better method of public key distribution for ‘federated’ systems.
While I don’t know anything specific about facebook messenger, E2EE doesn’t necessarily preclude what you suggest. A messaging service could store the entire chat history encrypted without decryption keys. When you get a new client you could restore the entire history in encrypted form onto your device. You would then use a recovery key you would possess to decrypt the message history on your end. At no time would the messaging service have the keys to decrypt. I’m not saying that is what facebook does.