IT Home reported on February 21 that Apple today announced a new iMessage post-quantum encryption protocol, called PQ3. Apple says the "groundbreaking" and "state-of-the-art" protocol can "provide a broad defense against highly sophisticated quantum attacks."
Today, we're announcing the biggest security upgrade to iMessage encryption in our history, PQ3. PQ3 is a breakthrough post-quantum encryption protocol that represents the forefront of end-to-end secure messaging technology.There is no industry standard for rating classic encryption protocols versus PQC encryption protocols, so Apple has developed its own rating system, and PQ3 achieves Level 3 full certification. Note: Here's how it is structured and where the Level 3 PQC standard for PQ3 comes from:With anti-leak encryption and extensive defense against sophisticated quantum attacks, PQ3 is the first messaging protocol to achieve what we call "Level 3 Security," with protocol protections that surpass all other widely deployed messaging applications. To the best of our knowledge, PQ3 has the strongest security of any large-scale messaging protocol in the world.
Last fall, Signal announced that it was the first platform to introduce post-quantum cryptography (PQC) security enhancements on a large scale, employing a "key establishment" mechanism; Apple, on the other hand, employs a double layer of security: PQC key establishment and continuous PQC key updates.
Apple said that Signal's introduction of PQC key establishment (Level 2) was "a welcome and critical step" to make it more secure than all other messaging platforms. However, it can only provide quantum security if the conversation key is not compromised. That's where the PQ3 (Level 3) protocol comes in, which protects both the initial key and the ongoing key updates. Importantly, this allows iMessage to quickly and automatically restore the encrypted security of the conversation even if a given key is compromised. ”