Discord unveiled an end-to-end encryption protocol dubbed DAVE for audio and video calls on Tuesday. It will offer encryption in direct messages (DMs), Group DMs, voice channels, and Go Live streams, for its estimated 200 million monthly users. The social media platform said that users will be able to check when end-to-end encryption is in effect and verify other members too. This development builds upon the experimentation Discord kicked off last year about new encryption protocols and other audio and video call technologies.
How Does End-to-end Encryption on Discord Work
In a blog post, Discord announced that its new Dave protocol follows five key goals: privacy, open and effective protocol, broad platform support, transparency, and scalability. The company says no outsiders, including Discord itself, can access the contents of ongoing audio and video conversations. Media encryption keys are changed every time a user leaves a call and previous keys cannot be decrypted.
The protocol leverages industry-standard sub-protocols and cryptographic algorithms and is already supported by Discord’s mobile and desktop clients. Support for the remaining clients will be rolled out next year. When a user starts a voice or video call, an out-of-band comparison of the verification code is done to ensure that the other participant in the call is legitimate.
Users can choose to have a persistent identity key pair for each device they use Discord on. It will potentially allow others to store their persistent verification, without repeating the process each time. However, every user must support the end-to-end encryption protocol for it to work. If a non-supporting member is present, the call is transferred over to a transport-only encryption.
Despite the encryption, Discord says low latency voice and video are not compromised. Following DAVE’s rollout, it will automatically migrate users to its new protocol versions, without any disruption. The protocol will become the default for voice and video in DMs, Group DMs, voice channels, and Go Live streams.
In addition to the rollout of the DAVE protocol, Discord has also published its whitepaper and the libraries its clients use to implement it.
