GSMA Plans End-to-End Encryption for Cross-Platform RCS Messaging

The GSM Association (GSMA), the regulatory organization that supervises the development of the Rich Communications Services (RCS) protocol, on Tuesday, said it's working towards adopting end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to safeguard data transferred between the Android and iOS ecosystems.

"The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to add important user protections such as interoperable end-to-end encryption," Tom Van Pelt, technical director of GSMA, stated.

"This will be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership."

The discovery comes a day after Apple officially launched out iOS 18 with support for RCS in its Messages app, which comes with sophisticated capabilities including message replies, typing suggestions, read receipts, and high-quality media sharing, among others.

RCS, an enhancement over the existing SMS standard, is presently not end-to-end encrypted out of the box, causing Google to add the Signal protocol to protect RCS conversations on Android.

Earlier last year, Apple announced it would collaborate with GSMA members to add encryption. It's worth mentioning that the company's proprietary iMessage service is E2EE enabled.

"We look forward to continuing to collaborate across the mobile ecosystem to advance the RCS standard with interoperable end-to-end encryption to keep all RCS messages private and secure," Van Pelt added.

Google, in July, also unveiled plans for baking the Message Layer Security (MLS) protocol to its Messages app for Android in order to promote interoperability between messaging services and platforms.

As recently as last month, Meta described its plan to allow interoperability with third-party messaging services in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as part of its attempts to comply with the E.U. Digital Markets Act (DMA) while keeping E2EE commitments "as far as possible."

"Building third-party chats is technically challenging and preserving privacy and security is a shared responsibility," the social media business added. "We have already come a long way, but there is a lot more to build."