Apple confirmed iOS 18 will assist RCS messaging on iPhone after which introduced RCS performance to the primary iOS 18 betas. You may textual content your Android contacts through RCS proper now, assuming your provider helps it.
Nonetheless, Apple mentioned that the iPhone will support the GSMA’s RCS standard, not Google’s implementation. Due to this fact, RCS on iPhone will lack the end-to-end encryption that iMessage will get, regardless that Google constructed encryption into its RCS system. It was clear again then that end-to-end encryption wouldn’t come to RCS on iPhone till the GSMA up to date its RCS commonplace.
Quick-forward to late July, and a Google Messages leak reveals that encryption may be within the works for the RCS common profile, which the GSMA helps. If that’s the case, RCS on the iPhone may additionally assist end-to-end encryption within the close to future.
Based on Android Authority, the Google Messages app on a Samsung cellphone comprises the next line of textual content: “+g.gsma.rcs.mls.mls-version.”
That reads like gibberish to most individuals, although you can also make out the GSMA and RCS acronyms. That ought to inform you that no matter RCS options Google is engaged on may be in partnership with the GSMA, which oversees the RCS commonplace.
The place’s end-to-end encryption in all of this? That may be the MLS point out, which is brief for the Messaging Layer Safety (MLS) commonplace. The Web Engineering Process Pressure (IETF) developed MLS to unravel the encryption drawback for group chats.
The identical weblog discovered proof earlier this month that Google is including MLS support to the Messages app in some capability.
Along with including end-to-end encryption to group chats, MLS helps safe chats throughout apps and platforms. In principle, this might carry encrypted chat communication throughout chat apps. It’s greater than safe RCS on iPhone. Different encrypted apps like Sign and WhatsApp may combine MLS and at some point work with Google Messages and different apps.
Nonetheless, on the time of that MLS discovery, there was no proof that Google was going at it alone or whether or not it was engaged on the RCS Common Profile. The GSMA point out in that newly found line of code signifies that Google may be engaged on end-to-end encryption for the RCS commonplace profile, not simply its implementation.
As a reminder, Google RCS already helps end-to-end encryption in one-to-one chats and group conversations. However that’s Google’s personal implementation, one thing Apple gained’t assist on iPhone.
The most recent code discovery means that different events could possibly be engaged on end-to-end encryption for the RCS Common Profile. The record may embody Apple. The iPhone maker may not be keen on supporting RCS on iPhones, nevertheless it has to do it. Provider regulation in China calls for it, and strain from different regulators might need all the time pressured Apple’s hand to undertake it.
That’s to say, we do not know when end-to-end encryption can be coming to RCS on iPhone. It certainly isn’t a precedence just like the opposite work Apple is doing on iMessage.
Nonetheless, Apple is all about privateness and safety, and the shortage of encryption in RCS is one thing that Apple must repair sooner fairly than later. Effectively, Apple can be fixing it by working with Google, the GSMA, and different events eager about encrypting RCS messages.
