New End-to-End Encryption Features for Groups and more

New End-to-End Encryption Features for Groups and more

Dmytro Matviiv — September 22nd, 2021

Many developers have used our end-to-end encryption libraries to secure message data in their products for compliance with HIPAA and GDPR, to limit developer liability from data breaches, to protect user privacy, and many other reasons.

With E3Kit, a client-side SDK for end-to-end encrypting any data, it’s possible to add end-to-end encryption to your chat app. E3Kit is an end-to-end encryption SDK with features like multi-device support and group chat built in. The best part is that you don't need to be an encryption expert to use it.

What can I end-to-end encrypt?

Anything – chat messages, files, photos, permanent or temporary data. The message data will be encrypted on the end devices and remain encrypted everywhere it’s sent and stored until the end user opens the message and decrypts it on her device. Neither you nor any of the networks, servers, databases, or third party services will see anything but scrambled data passing through.

With the long list of security features, it's even easier for developers to end-to-end encrypt data while developing own applications.

If you have questions or want to see what other developers are building, hop on our Slack channel to join the conversation. We can’t wait to see what you encrypt!

What's new in E3Kit and crypto libraries

Previously Virgil Security announced the initial release of the Virgil E3Kit Flutter.

Today we're happy to announce improvements and new security features:

  1. Multiple Group Admins. We've updated our APIs with the most wanted feature for group encrytion. As you know, E3Kit allows encrypting data for groups and this process also includes group members management (e.g. adding/deleting members, etc.). At this moment E3Kit doesn't support multiple group owners, but we're adding specific role to all E3Kit SDKs - Group Admin. Group Admins will have same right as Group Owners except they won't create or delete the group (so, just group members management).
  2. Apple Silicon support. We've updated our all crypto packages for supporing with new Apple chips. In order to start wokring with the Apple Silicon please update your programming SDK to the latest version.
  3. KeyName for users' backup keys. It is a new E3Kit's parameter that can be used while working with private keys' backups. For example, if user forgets the password, they can't restore the private key, as a result, they lose access to all the previously encrypted data. But E3Kit helps you to predict this case and provide you with the additional backup parameter keyName by activating which you can specify one more password (different one) for the user's key that will encrypt the key in parallel. For example, additional password can be a concatenated string of the 3 secret questions. Please read more here.

What we're working on

  1. New methods for E3Kit Flutter. Recently we've announced about the initional release of the E3Kit Flutter. At this moment, our development team is working on the new features like group encryption and large files encryption.
  2. Group management from App backend. We always work with feedback for better understanding our customers and their needs, and as far as we see, the next most requested feature is the group management from the application backend. So, our team is working on adding this secure feature in our SDKs. We'll keep you informed about it.

As always, encryption is at the heart of Virgil E3Kit, choose your own encryption use case to protect communications. To get started with E3Kit, sign up for a free Virgil Security developer account at dashboard.virgilsecurity.com, create your first application and follow the quickstart guide for end-to-end encryption with E3Kit.

Questions? Feel free to ask the Virgil Security team on Slack.

Previous
How to End-to-End Encrypt in Messages Using Twilio and Virgil Security
Dmytro Matviiv — September 22nd, 2020