Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, publicly announced in his presentation titled “Twitter 2.0” at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on November 21, 2022 his desire to improve how direct or private messages (DMs) work on the social network. The platform is reportedly working on adding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for those direct or private messages (DMs) exchanged between users on the platform…
New updates on Twitter
While Elon Musk previously hinted at plans to relaunch Vine and a user comment system to rate tweets, we haven’t seen an update on any of that so far. Instead, he talked about other important additions such as encryption of messages on the platform and possible voice and video calls. 
Indeed, Twitter started working on encrypting DMs in 2018 under the moniker “secret conversations,” but the feature never materialized. Musk has previously defended Signal’s privacy-centric encrypted messaging platform, suggesting he makes secure communications a priority for the service.
This end-to-end encryption update was noticed by application researcher Jane Manchun Wong. She did indeed uncover evidence that Twitter could bring end-to-end encryption, along with two other possible helpful changes. She made the information public via a series of tweets that leaked details about new features still in development.
“This number was generated from your encryption keys from this conversation. If it matches the recipient’s phone number, end-to-end encryption is guaranteed,” according to a comment on the source code.
Elon Musk appeared to confirm the feature was indeed in the works by responding with a wink emoji to the tweet.
This is a sought after and massively requested feature that would help protect private communications.
Why end-to-end encryption?
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a completely private secure communication protocol, with no access from any other party other than those participating in the messaging. It will improve privacy on Twitter and make it harder for cybercriminals and law enforcement to intercept messages. Applications like WhatsApp and Telegram have already implemented this type of protocol, and Meta announced that Facebook and Instagram will get it soon too. Musk added that he’s already spoken to Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike, who is now “potentially ready to help” Twitter.
End-to-end encryption also ensures that messages leave the sender in encrypted form and are decrypted on the recipient’s side to allow reading. For this to work, both parties must use a pair of cryptographic keys to encrypt and decrypt the content of their messages. In most E2EE implementations, the sender uses the receiver’s digitally signed public key to encrypt their message, and the receiver uses their private key to decrypt it.
In the case of Twitter, Wong mentions a “conversation key”, so the E2EE method implemented can be “symmetric”, meaning that both people in a chat use the same key for encryption and decryption.
If Twitter introduces E2EE on DMs, users will feel more comfortable about the security and privacy of their communications, even under certain circumstances like hacks that impact the platform.
Is end-to-end encryption really beneficial?
Beyond the technical work required to introduce E2EE itself, there are complicating factors that need to be considered. If Musk announces encrypted DMs in a short period of time, it would raise concerns about the security and quality of the feature.
Additionally, with Twitter’s 50% downsizing and the departure of key personnel — including chief information security officer Lea Kissner, who would understand the cryptological challenges of such a project — it’s unclear if the remaining team can really tackle such a complex feature.
But that won’t stop Elon Musk, because in his presentation titled “Twitter 2.0” at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on November 21, 2022, he went on to say that “we also want the ability to do voice and video chat via DMs, so you don’t have to give anyone your phone number.
After all, perhaps Twitter 2.0 is what Musk knows is needed to prevent users from leaking to other platforms like Hive Social and Mastodon…
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