Last week, with little fanfare, Google announced a change that could soon make its 2 billion Android users worldwide far harder to surveil: The tech giant says it's rolling out a beta version of its Android messaging app that will now use end-to-end encryption by default. That level of encryption, while limited to one-on-one conversations, is designed to prevent anyone else from eavesdropping—not phone carriers, not intelligence agencies, not a hacker who has taken over the local Wi-Fi router, not even Google itself will have the keys to decrypt and read those billions of messages.
The news isn't just a win for global privacy. It's also a win for one particular encryption system: the Signal protocol, which is well on its way to accounting for a majority of the world's real-time text conversations. As this protocol becomes the de facto standard for encrypted messaging in most major services, it's worth understanding what sets it apart from other forms of end-to-end encrypted messaging.
You might already know Signal thanks to the popular end-to-end encrypted text messaging app by the same name, created by cypherpunk Moxie Marlinspike and in recent years hosted by the nonprofit Signal Foundation. Signal, the app, has an unparalleled reputation for security and privacy, with high-profile endorsements from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WhatsApp founder Brian Acton, who left WhatsApp in 2018 to serve as the Signal Foundation's executive director.
But the underlying crypto system that Marlinspike designed and on which Si ..
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