Discord announced a new end-to-end encryption protocol, called DAVE, for audio and video calls. This encryption will be available in direct messages (DMs), group DMs, voice channels, and Go Live streams, enhancing security for its 200 million monthly users. Discord users can verify when encryption is active and authenticate other members, ensuring secure communications. This move follows Discord’s previous experiments with encryption and new audio/video technologies.
In a blog post, Discord outlined five goals for the DAVE protocol: privacy, an open and effective system, broad platform support, transparency, and scalability. The platform assured that no third party, including Discord itself, can access the contents of encrypted calls. Encryption keys are updated whenever someone leaves a call, and previous keys become irretrievable.
DAVE uses industry-standard cryptographic algorithms and sub-protocols. Currently, Discord's mobile and desktop clients support this new protocol, with broader platform support expected next year. During calls, participants verify each other through an out-of-band comparison of codes, ensuring legitimacy.
Users may opt for a persistent identity key for each device, allowing others to store their verification without re-verifying each session. However, end-to-end encryption only works if all participants support the protocol. Otherwise, calls revert to transport-level encryption.
Discord guarantees that low-latency voice and video quality won't be affected by DAVE. After the rollout, users will be seamlessly migrated to newer versions of the protocol, which will become the default for DMs, group DMs, Go Live streams and voice channels.