Implementation of an End-to-End Encryption Mechanism in WebRTC Video Streaming

This Master’s thesis presents a complete design and implementation of an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) mechanism for WebRTC video streaming. Although WebRTC supports built-in encryption using DTLS-SRTP, it does not guarantee true end-to-end protection, as intermediate servers like TURN or SFUs may still access the media. To address this, the project introduces an additional encryption layer directly between peers using the WebRTC Insertable Streams API. It uses secure symmetric encryption (AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305), and applies Elliptic-Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange to establish session keys. A custom signaling server was built using Node.js and Socket.IO to handle peer negotiation and key exchange. The prototype was evaluated for latency, CPU usage, and video quality, and tested against typical attacks such as MITM and replay attacks. This work demonstrates the feasibility of implementing customizable E2EE within WebRTC without sacrificing usability, and provides a solid foundation for further research into secure peer-to-peer real-time communication.