Messaging Layer Security (MLS) has been accepted by the IETF for publication as a standard. MLS is and #EndToEndEncryption method designed for group messaging. I've been working on integrating a variant of it with @Matrix.org (keep an eye out for demos coming soon). I've sat in on some of the IETF meetings, and the (not yet published) RFC may even contain some words that I've strung together. Congratulations to everyone who worked on it!
https://www.ietf.org/blog/mls-secure-and-usable-end-to-end-encryption/
https://www.ietf.org/blog/mls-secure-and-usable-end-to-end-encryption/
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Marvin W
•Hubert Chathi
Marvin W
•Do you think there could be reasonable ways to create a strict ordering of messages in the decentralized case so that no changes to MLS are necessary?
Hubert Chathi
I don't think it's possible to use an unmodified MLS in a decentralised case. Even if you could create a strict ordering, would have to end up completely discarding some updates, which is less than ideal.
Marvin W
•I had a look at your proposal. It seems to introduce the notion of "application’s group membership" which I guess is referring to the matrix room membership. Is this proposal primarily meant for Matrix or do you envision to build something for the generic case that's compatible with every messenger (incl those that don't have room membership).
Hubert Chathi
Marvin W
•On the application layer, a notion of group membership is not necessary and especially it doesn't need to be managed by servers (and if it's done by clients, than again, MLS already handles that, so clients "just" need to keep the MLS state and their application state in sync).
Hubert Chathi
Also, MLS isn't a complete membership system; for example, it doesn't define any permissions, and deliberately leaves that up to the application. For example, if Alice sends a commit that removes Bob from the tree, is that a valid operation? MLS leaves it up to the application to decide if that should be accepted.
Marvin W
•Marvin W
•If the application wants to handle permission levels, that's still perfectly compatible with MLS. But that also doesn't imply that the application's server(s) need to have full insights into group membership (e.g. they could be restricted to only know and share who is an admin of the group).
Hubert Chathi
Marvin W
•vanitasvitae reshared this.
Hubert Chathi