Apple has just announced that iMessage will be getting better security with a newcryptographic protocol called PQ3, which it will implement in the next round of OS updates.

What's important to note is that while PQ3 was developed to offer more robust encryption, itsmain goal to to protect iMessage chats against future quantum computers which may be powerful enough to crack current cryptography standards fast enough.

Before you panic, know that we are at least a decade or so away from such a threat, but there's no better time to start preparing for the future than now.

Furthermore, even though we are a long way from such computers, Apple is concerned about attackers who might store today's encrypted data away in the hopes of being able to crack them later with quantum computers.

In a post, Apple's security team said:

A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could solve these classical mathematical problems in fundamentally different ways, and therefore in theory do so fast enough to threaten the security of end-to-end encrypted communications.

Although such quantum computers dont yet exist, extremely well-resourced attackers can already prepare for their possible arrival by taking advantage of the steep decrease in modern data storage costs. The premise is simple: such attackers can collect large amounts of todays encrypted data and file it all away for future reference. Even though they cant decrypt any of this data today, they can retain it until they acquire a quantum computer that can decrypt it in the future, an attack scenario known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later.

Back to PQ3, which, according to Apple, "has the strongest security properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the world."

According to its own ranking system, Apple calls PQ3 "Level 3 security" and says it's one step ahead of Signal who also recently introduced more sophisticated post-quantum cryptography thanks to PQ3's implementation of ongoing PQC (post-quantum cryptography) rekeying. There are more details about how PQ3 works in the link at the bottom of the page.

PQ3 is already live in the iOS 17.4 beta and it will be officially available when Apple releases iOS 17.4 sometime in March. It will also be available in macOS 14.4, iPadOS 17.4, and watchOS 10.4. All devices that can update to the latest OS will be protected by PQ3.

To find out more about PQ3, hit the link below.

Source: Apple

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iMessage will get even stronger encryption to protect against future quantum computing attacks - HardwareZone