Sticking two E2EE tunnels together with a plaintext middleman doesn’t result in a single E2EE tunnel.
The reason the distinction is important is because the security profile is vastly different—a compromised server leads to a compromised message—which isn’t true for actual E2EE services like a pure Matrix link.
Side note: the first thing you should ask of a “end-to-end encrypted” product to you is “which ‘ends’ do you mean?” I’ve seen TLS advertised as E2EE before.
Adding: TLS is actually a pretty apt analogy here.
You could make a chat server that just accepts plain text messages over a TLS link, and that’s basically the same security topology as with this Beeper bridge.
Then it’s not E2E encrypted.
One end is your device, the other end is the other device. It’s only E2E encrypted if it is not decrypted until it reaches the other device.
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Sticking two E2EE tunnels together with a plaintext middleman doesn’t result in a single E2EE tunnel.
The reason the distinction is important is because the security profile is vastly different—a compromised server leads to a compromised message—which isn’t true for actual E2EE services like a pure Matrix link.
Side note: the first thing you should ask of a “end-to-end encrypted” product to you is “which ‘ends’ do you mean?” I’ve seen TLS advertised as E2EE before.
Adding: TLS is actually a pretty apt analogy here.
You could make a chat server that just accepts plain text messages over a TLS link, and that’s basically the same security topology as with this Beeper bridge.
But no one would call that a E2EE chat.