END TO END ENCRYPTION : AN ANSWER TO SECURITY CONCERNS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Personal online security is becoming an extremely important topic in engineering. This is due to the increased popularity of online communication. The best technology to ensure a user’s data is safe is end to end encryption. Ever since electronic mailing services became available to the public, questions arose about how secure these messages were. In addition, the popularity of online shopping, banking, and other financial online transactions brought forth an even higher demand for the security of the internet. An example of technology that can provide a high level of privacy is end to end encryption. Hardware embedded into phones and computers allows for the random locks and keys that make up end to end encryption only work on the devices involved in the conversation. This allows for the data that is being transmitted to be completely secure. End to End encryption is very useful for the sustainability of privacy online, as it protects users from attacks and it is very hard to crack. iMessage is the best example of this extremely important technology in action on a large scale. The end to end encryption of the messages makes it almost impossible to intercept an iMessage message. In addition, the history of encryption as it relates to this software being used by the public is important to the understanding of how end to end encryption evolved into how it is known today in applications like iMessage. Apple’s iMessage software is one of the most popular publicly available messaging software in use, therefore serving as a representative of the effectiveness of end to end encryption technology. Although this technology allows extremely high levels of security for users, this comes with some concerns, such as the limits encryption places on government surveillance. Key WordsAES, Cryptography, Cybersecurity, Encryption, End to End, Internet Privacy, Private Messaging THE IMPORTANCE OF ONLINE SECURITY As more and more people use the internet as a means to communicate, the importance of securing people’s and business’ online communications becomes more imperative and a much more difficult engineering challenge. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, there were an estimated 276 million internet users in the United States in 2014, and that number is predicted to rise [1]. With this many users, the incentive for hackers to execute attacks increases. CNET reported that in September of 2016, Yahoo! confirmed that 500 million accounts were hacked into, making it the largest data breach in history. Through this massive number of email accounts, names, other email addresses, contacts, phone numbers, security question answers, and contacts were all stolen. With this information, hackers had the ability to send out emails in the victim’s name and also read through all of the emails associated with the account. A majority of these hacked accounts are still being sold on the internet to people with the intent of stealing personal information, hacking into other accounts, and possibly even using the email to hack into an associated bank account [2]. According to a Javelin Strategy and Research Report in 2012, one in every four people that have a breach in their online data become a victim of identity theft as a result of that. [3]. This reveals the connection between online data breaches and hackers using this information to steal a victim’s identity. End to end encryption provides an effective way to prevent against these attacks through technology that allows the algorithms to be almost unbreakable. This technology, if implemented properly, could have prevented this large-scale attack. End to end encryption offers a sustainable solution to the ongoing problem of online security. According to Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice, sustainability is referred to as intersecting “with other social conditions, such as resilience, livability, adaptation, innovation and reconciliation, as basic conditions of positive social life. ” [4]. This technology offers peace of mind to users on the internet that their data is safe. In addition, end to end encryption is a technology that will remain relevant and in use for a long period of time, due to its security and adaptability. Overall, online security is very important in today’s society, however the concept of encryption has been around for centuries. THE HISTORY OF ENCRYPTION Earliest Forms of Encryption The idea of encrypting information so it is not available to be understood by anyone but the ended recipient of a message is not a new idea. An article published by the University of Utah reports that the first known example of cryptography dates back to an Egyptian town in 1900 BCE. A series of hieroglyphics with a number of unusual symbols was