The ‘Missing Link’ To Secure Communication (Part - 3)
How Decentralisation strengthens End-to-End Encryption.
Happy to see you guys back again! We have come to the last part of my 3-article series, and I bet you can’t wait to discover more about this ‘Missing Link’! I lost my sleep too, out of excitement, when I was exposed to this concept for the first time! It was fascinating to learn how smart hackers found out a way to pry into our lives breaching end-to-end encryption and how a bunch of even smarter developers built something incredible to block them out! And that incredible thing is the ‘Decentralised Communication Network’. Jumping straight into it with an instance, like I always do.
I will have to take some creative liberty here, to be able to explain the whole system in the simplest way possible. Say, it’s the ’70s. ‘The Godfather’ and Al Pacino are ruling the theaters and peoples’ hearts, respectively. However, the film has also inspired a lot of mafia aspirants. As a senior official of the National Security Agency (NSA), my work has doubled up. One wrong step can put the country’s security at stake. My job demands me not to trust anybody with any kinds of intel, apart from a handful of concerned people from within the agency. We’ve come up with a mechanism to transfer sensitive information to other regional offices with utmost security. But how does that work? Let me explain.
When I need to pass on any sensitive information, I use our own network of transporters. I fragment the content in multiple pieces so that none of those fragments makes sense in isolation, but when all the pieces are put together, the recipient gets a clear picture. It’s like a text version of the ‘jigsaw puzzle’. Each of these fragments is delivered through different transporters. That means, if any of them is attacked en route to their destination and gives away the piece that they are carrying, there’s no threat, because no one can make sense out of it. I should also mention, each of them uses different routes to their destination, so that others can’t be tracked down or stalked; and additionally, none of them knows who else is/are carrying the other nuggets of the intel. Absolute anonymity! Considering the intensity of such materials, the transporters keep a copy of the piece that they are delivering, in a safe place, for backup. These pieces of information along with their backup copies are always locked in; only the concerned recipients have the code to unlock those boxes. So, the transporters never get to see what they are delivering or keeping for backup. The safest possible way to transfer information, without needing to trust anybody; and that, my friend, is ‘decentralised end-to-end encryption’ for you.
It has two key components:
1. Decentralisation i.e. disintegrating the content into multiple fragments and transferring them through to the recipient via different ‘nodes’ (transporters), using a Peer-to-Peer network. It is, perhaps, the most secure mechanism available today, as it doesn’t depend upon an intermediary to enable this communication process, rather functions autonomously. As a result, your communication never gets stored in the service provider’s server and/or checked. It also eliminates the threat of being susceptible to hacking!
2. End-to-end Encryption i.e. encrypting the message, so that only the sender and the recipient have access to the conversation, and no one else! Additionally, like I mentioned in the example above, the nodes could keep a copy of the piece that’s going through them to the recipient, without risking it!
I’ll leave you to it now. Hope you understand how these components of the online communication process can affect us, and how unknowingly we end up leaving our personal data at a third party’s discretion. Honestly, it made me think. Should we give so much power to these organisations that they get to decide, if they want to use or even ‘misuse’ our personal data to their benefit, without our consent, or should we take control, be in the driver’s seat to taste freedom in the truest sense? Choice is yours! Let me know your thoughts on this in the comment section, and shout out, if you want me to cover any other topic/s for you. I will try my best to put a piece together; but if it’s beyond me, then one of the geniuses from my team will. 😊 I’ll see you in the next one. Au revoir!
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