Security experts say EU’s new rules will reduce messaging security

The European Union recently made statements about the Digital Markets Law (MDA) they developed to balance the competition in the technology world. The bill allows different messaging services to work together, but security experts say it allows end-to-end encrypted services like WhatsApp to be mixed with protocols that offer less security, thus creating major problems with message encryption.

‘Messaging security may weaken’

The DMA mainly focuses on large technology companies being subject to stricter rules and penalties to prevent them from monopolizing the industry. Applications or platforms with a market value of at least 75 billion euros and with at least 45 million monthly users will be subject to drastic measures in the law.

The draft law imposes privileges on smaller companies as well as forcing large companies. These privileges include allowing large tech companies’ platforms to work with smaller similar third-party services. This means that users on major messaging platforms can communicate with users on smaller platforms.

Security experts state that such an attempt could result in users’ overall messaging security being lost, as platforms such as WhatsApp, which offers end-to-end encryption, would require weakening or removing some of their own encryption in order to work with smaller messaging platforms.

Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former head of security at Facebook, said: “There is no way to allow end-to-end encryption without relying on each provider to handle identity management… behavior, it’s a privacy and security nightmare.” made statements.

While not all comments about DMA are negative, many security experts have begun to voice their concerns. There is no information on whether changes will take place on the draft law. The DMA is expected to take effect by October.