In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
The Signal protocol and MLS are useless without access to the key servers.
WhatsApp is also basically Signal’s protocol, but writing your own WhatsApp client is still very difficult. Without a documented implementation, you’ll still be reverse engineering Google’s solution if you want to inter-operate. Apple will easily be able to get the necessary documentation from Google, but right now that openness is vague and noncommittal.
Google said they were moving MLS into Android’s code, but every article says Google “announces” or “claims” or “promises”. When it comes to the actual source code, there’s nothing public out there right now.
Accessing the keys from the server isn’t really a mystery or hidden. It’s technically possible for Apple to write software to query servers run by Google as well as any servers they created for themselves.
You don’t need implementation source code when you have open standards already.
WhatsApp actually used Signal’s development team to rollout the Signal protocol for them, but that app is still untrustworthy.
@skullgiver
Do you have a link to those standards? All I could find was a high-level overview of “this is how the Signal based crypto is used in Messages” from a year and a half ago. It mentions extending the XML scheme used in RCS, but doesn’t provide a schema or any other details.
Google Messages and WhatsApp are both based on documented, secure protocols, and neither can be particularly trusted because both are run by data-hungry ad companies. I trust both companies to make the right choice in giving customers this little bit of privacy so they don’t leave the platform entirely, but they’re both equally iffy.
Hopefully with MIMI we will see complete cross-messenger compatibility, so open source messengers can be used for all communication.
Here are the links to the documentation for these standards:
MLS - https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/documents/
Signal Protocol - https://www.signal.org/docs/
RCS - https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/rcs/universal-profile/ & https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/resources/rcs-up-2-4-uni/
@skullgiver
I knew where to find these, but where are the details on Google’s implementation of them? Because that’s what’s most important here.