What is end-to-end encryption? How does it secure information? | Explained Premium

Learn about the importance of encryption, different encryption methods, and the advantages, limitations, and vulnerabilities of end-to-end encryption.

Information is wealth, and an important way to protect it is encryption. End-to-end (E2E) encryption in particular protects information in a way that has transformed human rights organisations’, law-enforcement agencies’, and technology companies’ outlook on their ability to access and use information about individuals to protect, prosecute or profit from them, as the case may be.

Fundamentally, encryption is the act of changing some consumable information into an unconsumable form based on some rules. There are different kinds of such rules.

For example, (with particular settings) the Data Encryption Standard (DES) encrypts the words “ice cream” to AdNgzrrtxcpeUzzAdN7dwA== with the key “kite”. If the key is, say, “motorcycle”, the encrypted text becomes 8nR+8aZxL89fAwru/+VyXw==.

The key is some data using which a computer can ‘unlock’ (decrypt) some ‘locked’ (encrypted) text, knowing the set of rules used to ‘lock’ it.

Say I write down AdNgzrrtxcpeUzzAdN7dwA== on one piece of paper and “kite” on another piece of paper, crumple them both, and throw them at my friend across the room. Suddenly a man I didn’t notice in the middle of the room leaps up to snatch the piece of paper saying AdNgzrrtxcpeUzzAdN7dwA== and runs away with it. Because this fellow doesn’t know the key (“kite”), he won’t know what the piece of paper says.

This is how encryption protects information, digitally.

E2E is encryption that refers to particular locations between which information moves.