The private messaging app XX Messenger developed by the Godfather of Privacy will allegedly withstand any decryption attempts.
Crypto pioneer David Chaum has launched the world’s first decentralized, quantum-resistant and privacy-focused messenger. The announcement was posted on the XX Network Twitter account.
Quantum-resistant messaging would mean that the app would be impenetrable to all currently known decryption methods. This would protect both the sender and the receiver, and keep their location data private. No information on either end of the conversation could be tracked or hijacked.
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Overall, quantum resistance means security from even the most powerful computers and decryption systems. While quantum computers could possibly crack encrypted messages on other communication platforms, it should be impossible when it comes to Chaum’s XX Messenger.
One of the highlighted features that XX Network has brought attention to is metadata shredding. The app claims to send the messages “through randomly-chosen xx network nodes around the world to change the order and the encryption before forwarding” and deleting this data afterward.
Every part of the metadata about who is talking to whom is thereby destroyed before any of the parts can even be reassembled for tracing.
The cryptography of the XX Messenger is open-source and available on GitHub. It was built on the XX Network blockchain and uses over 250 nodes located in more than 80 countries.
David Chaum is a world-renowned cryptographer and blockchain researcher, having proposed the first known blockchain protocol in the 1980s. Among his achievements is Ecash, an electronic cash app that provided its users with cryptographic security.
According to Chaum, the goal is to “rapidly increase the number of nodes to 550”, bringing the security measures to an even higher level.
Most of the widely-used private messaging apps currently utilize either end-to-end encryption or client-server encryption. The security of the former depends on the strength of the encryption itself, while the latter uses centralized systems for the encryption and storage of information.
However, as the XX Messenger team states, these apps still collect metadata from the messages. Hence, they made the decision to develop an app that not only uses end-to-end encryption, but also does not collect any metadata.
As crypto natives and crypto newcomers begin entering the metaverse and the broader web3 economy, they will be presented with a tabula rasa.
The XX Messenger app is currently available on Apple and Android devices and can be downloaded on the respective app stores.
