Facebook introduced a new protocol for encrypting chat conversations

The Facebook company published on the portal GitHub the code for a new encryption protocol for group chat with increased reliability, which was named Asynchronous Ratcheting Tree (ART).

According to the authors of the project – a group of researchers from Facebook and the University of Oxford – existing protocols do not provide enough reliable protection for correspondence in group chat messaging such instant messengers as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Signal. If only one chat participant is compromised, the cybercriminal gets unlimited access to all messages in the group, which can lead to data leakage and other security incidents.

The developed encryption protocol ART assigns a single secure key for a group of chat participants, which operates regardless of whether the network is currently users or not. When the chat is generated, asymmetric keys are created for all interlocutors and a one-time configuration key for the group administrator. Using the Diffie-Hellman customization key, you can set protected “leaf keys” for chat members that are offline. In case of compromise, ARM generates new public keys on all nodes and provides them to the group members.

Also at the end of last month, the social network introduced three new functions to protect users. The first one is designed to combat phishing emails and allows you to find out whether Facebook sent emails to a specific account. The other two relate to the filtration of harmful content and the theft of personal data.