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1. Hubert Chathi (hubert@social.uhoreg.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jul-2023 10:47:17 EDT Hubert Chathi
   Messaging Layer Security (MLS) is now RFC 9420 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9420/! MLS is a standard for end-to-end encryption in messaging systems. Many messaging systems, including @Matrix.org, are working on supporting MLS. A huge thank you to @Richard Barnes and @Raphael Robert, and to many others, for their work on MLS.
   1. Hubert Chathi (hubert@social.uhoreg.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jul-2023 11:07:15 EDT Hubert Chathi

      in reply to
      One common question that comes up with MLS is whether different messaging systems that use MLS will be able to interoperate. For example, with Matrix, Wire, and Wickr using MLS, could users of one system communicate with users of the other? The short answer is "no", since even if the encryption system is the same, the payload is different. However, there is another working group at the IETF, https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/, that is working on that issue, so we may get interoperable end-to-end encrypted messaging in the not-too-distant future. Naturally we at @Matrix.org are in on that effort (though not me personally, other than in a peripheral role).
   2. Hubert Chathi (hubert@social.uhoreg.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jul-2023 10:54:51 EDT Hubert Chathi

      in reply to
      I'm happy to be working on MLS support for @Matrix.org. You can see our progress at arewemlsyet.com. I've been working on it for several years now (the hardest part has been figuring out how to adapt it to work in a decentralised environment), but we're getting closer to something that's usable in clients. We have a proof-of-concept implementation (don't use it for anything serious, because it may self-destruct without warning), and some demo videos. And we'll be working on advancing our extensions for decentralisation into a standard, somehow.
   3. Hubert Chathi (hubert@social.uhoreg.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jul-2023 11:22:44 EDT Hubert Chathi

      in reply to
      I've given some talks about MLS in the past, including www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOMUG_… which is a hand-wavey high-level overview of how MLS works, and archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedu… about MLS in Matrix.
   4. Hubert Chathi (hubert@social.uhoreg.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Jul-2023 11:35:48 EDT Hubert Chathi

      in reply to
      Also, this seems like a good time to highlight the fact that end-to-end encryption is essential for secure communications, and attempts by governments to limit or backdoor encrypted messengers are misguided. There was a time when governments fought against SSL (now TLS), but now it is everywhere and widely accepted. Governments are now fighting against end-to-end encryption, but hopefully that will see the same fate as their fight against SSL.