Platform-Agnostic End-to-End Encryption for Modern Instant Messaging Platforms Mikko Ilmonen
[email protected] BSc (Hons), Computer Science, University of Aberdeen, 2020 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science (Honours) of the University of Aberdeen. Department of Computing Science 2020 Declaration No portion of the work contained in this document has been submitted in support of an application for a degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institution of learning. All verbatim extracts have been distinguished by quotation marks, and all sources of information have been specifically acknowledged. Signed: Date: 2020 Word Count: 17488 Abstract This dissertation investigates whether it is possible to perform end-to-end encryption over an ar- bitrary Instant Messaging Platform (IM-P), placing no implicit trust in such platform itself. In the current state of the world, people are fragmented across multiple different messaging platforms, alarmingly few of which are completely transparent about the data they collect and the security features they provide. Regardless of whether users trust their platform or not, they can be forced to use them for the simple reason of trying to reach someone they know. The dissertation proposes this implicit trust should not be required in the first place, and users can use additional software to communicate securely with a set of recipients, even if they do not trust the platform they communicate on. While this has already been done in the past with PGP encrypted e-mails transmitted over an unsecure medium, it has never been widely successful either due to the difficulty of setup, decline of e-mail as a messaging platform, or more likely a combination of the two.