key-transparency

2 posts

cloudflare

Bringing more transparency to post-quantum usage, encrypted messaging, and routing security (opens in new tab)

Cloudflare Radar is expanding its security coverage with new visibility into post-quantum encryption, Key Transparency for encrypted messaging, and ASPA deployment for routing security. The updates extend monitoring from user-to-Cloudflare connections to origin servers, provide tools for testing individual websites, and expose verification data that users can independently inspect. Together, they aim to make emerging Internet security technologies more measurable and transparent. ## Measuring Origin Post-Quantum Support - Cloudflare has tracked browser and client support for post-quantum encryption since 2024, rising from below 3% to more than 60% by February 2026. - The monitored algorithm, `X25519MLKEM768`, combines: - Classical X25519 key exchange - NIST-standardized ML-KEM post-quantum cryptography - Radar now measures whether customer origin servers support the same hybrid key exchange. - Cloudflare’s automated TLS scanner probes TLS 1.3-compatible origins and aggregates results daily. - The data measures algorithm support, not necessarily algorithm preference; a server’s TLS configuration can still choose a classical exchange even when post-quantum support exists. - Approximately 10% of origins currently support post-quantum-preferred key agreement, up from less than 1% in early 2025. - Adoption has accelerated as newer versions of OpenSSL, GnuTLS, and Go enabled hybrid post-quantum support by default. - Origin readiness data is available through Radar, Data Explorer, and the Radar API. ## Website Post-Quantum Compatibility Testing - Radar now includes a tool for testing whether a publicly accessible hostname supports post-quantum encryption. - Users can enter a hostname and optionally specify a port, with HTTPS port 443 used by default. - Results show: - Whether the connection is post-quantum secure - The negotiated TLS key exchange algorithm - The tool uses Cloudflare Containers to run a Go-based TLS scanner. - Because Workers cannot inspect the underlying TLS handshake, the container uses Go’s `crypto/tls` package to perform the connection and report the negotiated algorithm. - Cloudflare has consolidated its client- and origin-facing post-quantum measurements into a dedicated Radar section. ## Key Transparency for Encrypted Messaging - End-to-end encrypted services such as WhatsApp and Signal depend on correct public-key distribution. - If a messaging provider’s key database were compromised, an attacker could replace a contact’s public key and potentially intercept messages without detection. - Key Transparency mitigates this risk through an auditable, append-only public-key log. - The model is comparable to Certificate Transparency: - Messaging services publish users’ public keys to a transparency log. - Independent auditors verify that the log is correctly built and remains consistent. - Radar now provides a public dashboard for Key Transparency Logs used by E2EE messaging services. - The dashboard shows when each log was last signed and verified by Cloudflare’s Auditor. - Users can also access an API to independently validate the Auditor’s proofs. ## Routing Security and ASPA - Radar’s routing security coverage now includes global, country-level, and network-level information about ASPA deployment. - ASPA is an emerging standard intended to help detect and prevent BGP route leaks. - The new data extends Radar’s broader monitoring of Internet routing security. Cloudflare’s additions make post-quantum readiness, encrypted-message key integrity, and routing protection easier to measure and verify. Organizations can use the Radar dashboards, API, and hostname testing tool to assess their own migration and security posture.

meta

Key Transparency Comes to Messenger (opens in new tab)

Messenger has enhanced the security of its end-to-end encrypted chats by launching key transparency, a system that provides an automated, verifiable record of public encryption keys. By moving beyond manual key comparisons, this feature ensures that users can verify their contacts' identities without technical friction, even when those contacts use multiple devices. This implementation allows Messenger to provide a higher level of assurance that no third party, including Meta, has tampered with or swapped the keys used to secure a conversation. ## The Role of Key Transparency in Encrypted Messaging * Provides a verifiable and auditable record of public keys, ensuring that messages are always encrypted with the correct keys for the intended recipient. * Prevents "man-in-the-middle" attacks by a compromised server by making any unauthorized key changes visible to the system. * Simplifies the user experience by automating the verification process, which previously required users to manually compare long strings of characters across every device their contact owned. ## Architecture and Third-Party Auditing * Built upon the open-source Auditable Key Directory (AKD) library, which was previously used to implement similar security properties for WhatsApp. * Partners with Cloudflare to act as a third-party auditor, maintaining a public Key Transparency Dashboard that allows anyone to verify the integrity of the directory. * Leverages an "epoch" system where the directory is updated and published frequently to ensure that the global log of keys remains current and immutable. ## Scaling for Global Messenger Traffic * Manages a massive database that has already grown to billions of entries, reflecting the high volume of users and the fact that Messenger indexes keys for every individual device a user logs into. * Operates at a high frequency, publishing a new epoch approximately every two minutes, with each update containing hundreds of thousands of new key entries. * Optimized the algorithmic efficiency of the AKD library to ensure that cryptographic proof sizes remain small and manageable, even as the number of updates for a single key grows over time. ## Infrastructure Resilience and Recovery * Improved the system's ability to handle temporary outages and long delays in key sequencing, drawing on two years of operational data from the WhatsApp implementation. * Replaced older proof methods that grew linearly with the height of the transparency tree with more efficient operations to maintain high availability and real-time verification speeds. * Established a robust recovery process to ensure that the transparency log remains consistent even after infrastructure disruptions. By automating the verification of encryption keys through a transparent, audited directory, Messenger has made sophisticated cryptographic security accessible to billions of users. This rollout represents a significant shift in how trust is managed in digital communications, replacing manual user checks with a seamless, background-level guarantee of privacy.