Discord brings encryption to voice and video chats
Social chat platform Discord has announced that voice and video calls within the platform are now end-to-end encrypted, meaning the platform won't know what users are talking about in those conversations.
In the past decade, end-to-end encrypted chat has gone from being a rare exception in the mid-2000s to a technology used by the world's most popular chat apps, such as WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, iMessage, and others.
Discord originated as a group chat platform for gamers with a focus on voice calls for users playing online games together, though it has become popular among people who want a place where a large number of people can interact.
Discord, which claims to have up to 200 million monthly users, announced last year that it was working to bring end-to-end encryption to its platform, starting with voice and video calls, saying millions of people talk on Discord calls.
“We’re starting with end-to-end encryption for voice and video in direct messages, group direct messages, voice channels, and live broadcasts,” Stephen Berarda, software engineer on Discord’s audio and video infrastructure team, wrote in a blog post announcing the rollout. “You can verify that your calls are end-to-end encrypted and verify other members in those calls.”
Berarda also explained the technical details of the technology Discord is implementing, explaining that private messages will not be end-to-end encrypted.
“Safety is intertwined with our product and policies,” Berarda wrote. “Audio and video are end-to-end encrypted, while private messages on Discord continue to follow a content moderation approach and will not be end-to-end encrypted.”
Discord spokeswoman Kellyanne Sloan said the platform has no further plans at this time to roll out encryption in other areas, such as private messages or group chats.
Berarda announced that the company is in the process of releasing a research paper on the encryption protocol, which he said was reviewed by cybersecurity consulting firm Trail of Bits, in addition to open-sourcing the code.
