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You may have heard recently that Apple is planning to implement Rich Communication Services (RCS) on iPhones, once again igniting the green versus blue bubble debate. RCS will thankfully bring a number of long-missing features to those green bubble conversations in Messages, but Apple’s proposed implementation has a murkier future when it comes to security.
The RCS standard will replace SMS, the protocol behind basic everyday text messages, and MMS, the protocol for sending pictures in text messages. RCS has a number of improvements over SMS, including being able to send longer messages, sending high quality pictures, read receipts, typing indicators, GIFs, location sharing, the ability to send and receive messages over Wi-Fi, and improved group messaging. Basically, it’s a modern messaging standard with features people have grown to expect.
The RCS standard is being worked on by the same standards body (GSMA) that wrote the standard for SMS and many other core mobile functions. It has been in the works since 2007 and supported by Google since 2019. Apple had previously said it wouldn’t support RCS, but recently came around and declared that it will support sending and receiving RCS messages starting some time in 2024. This is a win for user experience and interoperability, since now iPhone and Android users will be able to send each other rich modern text messages using their phone’s default messaging apps.
But is it a win for security?
On its own, the core RCS protocol is currently not any more secure than SMS. The protocol is not encrypted by default, meaning that anyone at your phone company or any law enforcement agent (ordinarily with a warr
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