Apple is taking steps to protect iMessage from future threats by implementing enhanced encryption for its messaging service using quantum computers. This state-of-the-art quantum security is designed to make Apple’s messaging system more secure against current and future adversaries, providing the strongest security properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the world.
Announced on Apple’s Security Research blog, the new iMessage protection, called PQ3, aims to safeguard against potential “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attacks, where hackers could gather encrypted iMessage data today to break the encryption using quantum computers in the future.
While such attacks are currently less likely due to the limited availability and high cost of quantum computers, the rise of quantum computing poses a potential threat to the security of end-to-end encrypted communications. As a result, Apple and the cryptographic community are exploring Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) to develop new public key algorithms that can protect against future quantum computer attacks.
Apple’s PQ3 technology has been verified by leading security researchers, and it is designed to secure the initial key establishment and restore security rapidly and automatically if the initial key becomes compromised.
2024-02-23 01:00:05
Article from www.computerworld.com