We expect they’re secure from prying eyes.Īs Google explains, its security focuses on the connection between you and Google, not what happens after that: “Chat features by Google uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption to protect your messages. We use messengers to chat with work colleagues. And while you probably think that most of your messages don’t warrant security, we all send financial details, contact details and other sensitive information over messengers. The fact is that either your messages are end-to-end encrypted or they’re not. The technical details don’t especially matter here.
I asked Google whether it has addressed any of the security issues raised by SRLabs-there has been no response as yet. RCS provisioning “is badly protected in many networks,” the team said, “allowing hackers to fully take over user accounts.” And Google Messages “does not implement sufficient domain and certificate validation, enabling hackers to intercept and manipulate communication through a DNS spoofing attack.”
#Android messages upgrade#
Last year, Germany’s SRLabs warned that deploying RCS as an SMS upgrade without a new approach to security “exposes most mobile users to hacking.” The researchers warned that the way in which Google and the carriers were deploying RCS would open users to impersonation-mimicking the number and IP address of a device, interception and tracking. As Google says, “if your chat features are provided by Google, but your recipient’s RCS service is with another provider, your messages are routed through Google’s RCS backend and then routed to your recipient's RCS backend.” You can control when iMessage uses SMS-you don’t have that easy flexibility with Google Messages’ use of RCS. And if the message links in with other RCS deployments, then it’s as unsecured as an SMS. Your message is encrypted between your phone and Google’s servers, but that message can be decrypted en route-you’re not the only one with the key.
#Android messages android#
Google has decided to adopt an updated SMS architecture, to work with the carriers rather than providing Android with an “over the top” equivalent to iMessage. iMessage does exactly the same-as long as it’s that blue bubble, once you go green and SMS, then all bets are off. No-one-including the network and WhatsApp-can see what you have sent. What it means, put simply, is that the message is secured with only the sender and the recipient holding the decryption key. Many reading this will know exactly what this means-but a surprising number of users are still unaware of the differences. Last year, I reported on a Chinese cyberattack on global carriers pulling SMS from senders and recipients at will.īack in 2016, WhatsApp fixed this by defaulting to what’s called end-to-end encryption. And given we text people on different networks and in different countries, your SMS can travel across a hotchpotch of different network servers and systems.
Once the SMS has disappeared into the network, it is open to interception. When you send an SMS, the data is encrypted between your phone and the cell tower-it can’t easily be intercepted over the air, as such.
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