The widespread adoption of smartphones in the last decade has brought with it a meteoric rise in the use of secure messaging apps. Over 2 billion people used WhatsApp in January 2022, while 40 million people used Signal.
However secure these messaging apps are today, large-scale quantum computers will soon have the processing power to break the end-to-end encryption they rely on to keep messages private.
That’s a big problem. “Secure messaging is how many businesses communicate, how whistleblowers share truth with journalists, and how family and friends connect across borders,” says our CEO, Ali El Kaafarani. “It’s become an almost fundamental right for much of the global population.”
Today, PQShield published recommendations for how to protect secure messaging for the quantum era.
In a new white paper, our researchers outline how post-quantum cryptography can be applied to the Signal secure messaging protocol in a two-person setting, and explain how this could be scaled to group messaging, which comes with its own unique challenges.
PQShield is offering to license its end-to-end encrypted messaging IP to the Signal Foundation pro bono, to support the non-profit in its mission to make secure communication accessible to everyone.
“We’re proud to offer this advisory for free, so private communication can remain accessible to all,” says Ali.