They’ve stated that they are using Mac minis as relays. They claim that they do not store messages or credentials, but I don’t see how that’s possible if it relies on a Mac or iOS relay server that they control.
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They might be able to relay them in a way that the end to end encryption is actually handled on the phone and the relay only relays encrypted messages.
That would likely still give them a capability to MitM but it’s plausible that they couldn’t passively intercept the messages.
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Absolutely. The iMessage network isn’t some unknowable beast, it “just” requires an Apple device be involved and activated to work. In order to spoof that far, you’d essentially need to emulate quite a bit on device.
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They might be able to relay them in a way that the end to end encryption is actually handled on the phone and the relay only relays encrypted messages.
They’d need to control the app on both phones in order to control what it’s encrypting/decrypting. Their system only works because they’ve got a device in the middle separately decrypting/re-encrypting each message. Google’s Messages app can’t read iMessages; Apple’s Messages app can’t read Google’s proprietary encrypted RCS messages.
Of course if you want universally cross-platform messaging, complete with full-resolution photos and available with end-to-end encryption, there’s this crazy new technology called “email.” I feel like there’s a missed opportunity for making setting up S/MIME easier.
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If it’s anything like Beeper 's Matrix bridge then it’s E2EE Matrix encrypted between your device and the bridge server and then using Apple’s iMessage encryption between the bridge server and Apple/the other user.
The weak point is always going to be the bridge software as by necessity the message must be decrypted there to re-encrypt for iMessage.
At least in Beeper/Matrix the bridge software is open source and one can host their own bridge while continuing to use the existing Beeper/Matrix main server.
Doing so gives you no-trust security since the Beeper/Matrix host cannot decrypt the messages between you and the bridge you control and rubbing your own bridge eliminates that weak point.
Solving the “blue bubble” problem is easy. Stop giving a fuck about what iPhone users care about.
They want iPhone users to have want they want and need when switching to Android. I think it’s not a bad idea. Personally, I find MMS to be horrible. Not because of lack of features but because it is different for everybody in one group chat. The messages become out of order, things don’t send but say they do, etc. iMessage isn’t the best solution, but if I’m being kicked out of group chats because I’m that one person making it MMS, then I’m all for iMessage on Android.
I am wondering if there is any other alternative to SMS and MMS that works on all mobile & desktop platforms. Hmmm, let me think… Hmm… Probably not. 🙆
Or Apple can stop being a bitch and just change the hex code.
I’m an iPhone user and I don’t care about this. Not everyone who has an iPhone gives a shit about what phones other people use. Use whatever phone you want and whatever computer you want and whatever OS you want and stop giving a fuck about what other people use like it’s some sort of crime.
My problem with that is that a lot of them then insist on using an outdated standard that lacks encryption and high resolution media instead of just downloading something like WhatsApp, Signal, or Matrix.
I predict one of two outcomes once Apple becomes aware of this. Either they’ll modify the iMessage protocol to break Nothing Phones compatibility, or they’ll sue Nothing Phone for violating some kind of IP law. Apple absolutely wants to maintain their walled garden and letting a non-Apple product transparently interact on equal footing with Apple products runs counter to that.
Outcome 3: they buy whatever company is responsible for creating this compatibility layer, slowly integrate it so they can skate past several international regulations/lawsuits trying to open iMessage, and declare victory.
Why would they buy a company that is using a workaround when they could just make an iMessage app for android
Because that’s not their goal, they absolutely don’t want iMessage to work on Android, at least not without severe limitations. They want Android to look like a second class citizen. If they bought the intermediary company it would be with the intent of strangling it not expanding it. They’ll just slow walk the murder so that regulators don’t take too much notice.
For one: it helps them avoid any adjudication that would force them to do just that while avoiding admitting they have the ability to.
Nah, Apple doesn’t care.
These bridges like the ones found in Beeper/Matrix require a Mac server to perform the handshake with Apple’s.
As long as these servers require Apple hardware to function Apple is making money.
It’s roughly equivalent to running iMessage on your Mac at home and making an Android/PC app that remotely sends/receives messages to/from that iMessage app on your Mac.
The messaging is provided by a third party who is dedicated to working on their iMessage compatibility. Apple has no reason to stop this because this is a good move for them in the larger battle between mobile messaging standards.
Google owns Jibe, the company behind RCS messaging found on all Android phones and an emerging, competent product from the only game in town that can compete with Apple. Google has decided to take this to the government level and push for a unified phone messaging standard, normally a good thing, but proposed their own RCS solution. The one they own and whose servers Google scrapes for user info.
Apple is pushing iMessage as a protest against Google and their inevitable lawsuit to conform with RCS adoption. Android may win unless Apple shows it has parity and provides a non-legislative option: if enough people use iMessage then governments don’t have to make any laws or enforce changes. The company Nothing is using iMessage, which helps Apple prove there is both a significant user base, which would cause a burden on Apple and it’s customers to change, and there is no monopoly on iMessage or messaging in general. So if enough people use iMessage, Apple sees it as a good thing.
RCS is not a Google product, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSMA
Apple has been pushing iMessage for quite some time, but they want to keep it just to their platform and have made no attempt to make it open to other users. That’s Apples way and it’s not as a “protest” to Google lol
That’s like saying they made the lightning port as a protest to USB standards, nah they just want their proprietary shit.
That’s like saying they made the lightning port as a protest to USB standards, nah they just want their proprietary shit.
They wanted a new, compact, durable, reversible plug for their mobile devices. There was no industry-standard option that met their requirements, so they made their own. If USB-C had existed at the time, they would have used it (though as a physical connector, Lightning is still just plain better).
Lmao, how is Lightning better than a USB-C? They’re both practically the same thing, even in durability. Apple might’ve made Lightning first, yes, but then USB-C came out like 2 years later.
Be real here: Apple only stuck with Lightning because it’s stupid easy money for them. Cables are hella cheap to make, and if you make them in-house, you basically spend like $2 at most to manufacture 1 cable. Lightning has the upside of both that and forcing people into the Apple ecosystem because their old phone cables can charge the new phones.
They use a Mac mini somewhere to route these messages. So you’re logging into that Mac mini with your iCloud credentials. Sounds like a privacy/security nightmare and creepy as fuck.
It seems like all efforts to “bridge” imessage to anything outside apple software work this way - there’s a Matrix bridge and a dedicated open source app and they both rely on the imessage client on a mac. Is there a legitimate reason for it not being reverse-engineered yet?
Is there a legitimate reason for it not being reverse-engineered yet?
The actual protocol isn’t a secret. It’s that the authentication of the device relies on a hardware key, and that key is fully locked down by Apple (as it also secures the user’s biometric logins, keyring, financial information in Apple Wallet, etc.).
If it relies on a hardware key then why is it that I can get the same setup working with a macos virtual machine?
Using [BlueBubbles] (https://bluebubbles.app/) for anyone wondering.
More likely just a Linux VM
iMessage only runs on Apple products
…or a virtualized Apple product on a Linux machine. iMessage doesn’t know the difference.
Honestly I’m typing this on a Nothing phone and if this appears on my phone instead of them actually fixing the many bugs I’ll be quite pissed.
Every update this phone gets worse both in bugs and battery life and the company seems more obsessed with things like beer, clothing lines and now imessage than actually trying to fix anything that’s actually important.
Nothing often gives me the impression that they sit around and get high off the smell of their own farts. Glad to hear there is some truth to this speculation.
They are the punk-rock of smartphones
if it was imagined by CEOs of a major label.
At least, they got the cover art right.
Teenagers today suffer unique threats to their health and wellbeing from technology. It may be super easy for you to say “who the fuck cares about the color” but that is far from the case for US teenagers. Willingly setting yourself apart from the group in high school is a precarious move in the best of circumstances.
And for the rest of us, this goes way beyond the color being used. The SMS/MMS fallback in iMessage offers a terrible experience for non-Apple users. Low quality media, inability to manage one’s own memeberships in groups, and no encryption. For those worried about the lack of e2ee: Android users participating in an iMessage conversation don’t have that today. You’re not losing anything from this solution.
Legal disclosures prove that Apple knowingly uses iMessage in an anticompetitive fashion. It’s a moat to keep people from switching away from iPhone. They are leveraging their position in the messaging market to shore up their restrictive phone products. I wish US antitrust enforcement was stronger in this area but until then, I hope Nothing has great success in breaking down this illegal barrier.
Really interesting how different the US is. Here in central europe it’s pretty much whatsapp, telegram, signal. Most people use 2 or 3 of those. Doesn’t matter what device they are using
iPhones are really popular over there. Most people have one. For teenagers it’s something ridiculous like 85% of them using an iPhone. In Europe we have a more balanced split, so only using iMessage wouldn’t fly here.
I’ve seen a bit of an uptick in the use of Signal in the US, like it’s worth having it installed…sorta.
How the hell do so many teens afford these??
It’s far cheaper than your first car and arguably more important. You find a way when you have to.
The stupidest thing about this is cultural identification with the message apps “bubble” color.
*exceptional 'murican identification with the blue bubble.
And the same enlightened kids who are so aware about discrimination and gender fluidity (which is good) are the ones discriminating against others because they don’t have an iPhone.
Sunbird is closed source so you just have to take their word for it when they say they don’t store messages or credentials. How the fuck could you know if they’re lying or not? You can’t because it’s closed source.
As much as I have issues with the similar Beeper, at least Beeper is open sourcing their bridges.
Just read through their faq
Some of the messaging community believes that software that is open source is more secure. It is our view that it is not.
That’s a nope from me.
Yeah okay at first I thought “closed source isn’t necessarily a problem as long as there’s a good reason”.
But nope. That’s the worst reason.
In other words: “Some of the messaging community believes that software that can be controled by the user and is clear how it works is doing what the user wants it to. It is our view that it is not.”
They are just like the rest of big companies. Remember when Facebook was a privacy respecting and friendly alternative for MySpace? Or Apple for IBM? Or Google for other search engines?
They host their iMessage related shit the exact same way, so the amount of trust in the service is basically identical, at 0
The blue vs green bubble thing never really bothered me. As long as I can communicate with the person I’m talking to, I don’t care how the messages are sent, unless maybe if I don’t want a message to be sent over plain sms. It’s ridiculous how it has become a status thing.
I hear this a lot, I’ve not known a single person who has considered it a status thing. There are people who have cheap phones from both apple and android and they were made fun of for the price of the phone, not the bubble color. iMessage just made it much nicer to talk to people. “I can send messages over wifi!” made it so you could send messages in school or anywhere with a big metal roof. “The images are better!” These were limitations of the SMS standard that Apple designed around. Now? Yeah, there’s other options, but back then iMessage made its hold by being able to be used by people who couldn’t use SMS or didn’t want to for whatever reason
That’s because you’re looking at it from an adults perspective, if you go into a HS you’ll see it (Source, used to be a substitute in a past life) and there have even been some articles on it that the whole blue/green bubble thing is targeting by Apple towards teens in HS rather than adults.
Many people never mature past high school so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this amongst older people.
“The images are better!” These were limitations of the SMS standard that Apple designed around.
Apple intentionally sets the MMS size limit extremely low, much lower than any other manufacturers or carriers.
This is done intentionally to make communications with non-apple devices a worse experience.
They weren’t just “making the best of what they had”
They were/are actively making the non-proprietary experience worse.
On purpose
It is though. I’m the only developer in an agency of designers. Yes, they all have iphones and I’m the only Android lol
It’s absurd, but i get the blue bubble looks of superiority all the time.
I’m the only developer in an agency of designers
In the US. Outside of the US no one uses iMessage, not even iPhone users.
I’m in Germany, at least my designer colleagues love iMessage, but not for work. Since we know each other for a long time, there’s lots of semi private messaging going around.
Not only someone using iMessage but at the same time not using Signal or Whatsapp? Thats the first time I’ve heard of either of these two.
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WhatsApp for the older generation, Signal for the younger (Germany).
I knew it lol
So they use iPhones, but you’re the only one who Thinks different ™ 😎
It’s not just about the color of the bubble. If you go on an outing with a group of iPhone users, there’s a high chance they’ll create a group chat with and without you, because the group chat with you won’t let them send HQ photos. Even if they aren’t trying to be exclusionary, someone will inevitably forget to send messages to both group chats. iMessage incentivizes situations like this which socially punishes Android users.
It’s also noteworthy that the RCS platform adopted by companies worldwide is run by Jibe, a company owned by Google. Doubtless, Apple doesn’t want to use Google’s servers any more than it needs to.
“open protocol” my ass. Google just wants control over everything.
Except companies can run their own. In Google messages it tells you who runs your server. Most carriers ran their own, but when they realised there was no benefit (e2ee) and having to maintain it, they started shifting to Google ran servers.
But can’t run my own server.
I don’t know, but that’s not what was said. The comment I replied to said Google controlled everything, and that’s false.
Just here to correct false claims.
When I watched MKBHDs video on this, my first thought was whether or not we could selfhost a service like this. If I could run this through my own Mac mini server to my own / family’s phones, that would be great. I don’t think I’d ever feel comfortable logging into my iCloud account on some company’s server with just their pinky promise as a guarantee.
Well yeah it’s not. But it’s the first time something like this has been integrated onto an personal consumer device.
Apple will just block it once they catch on
This has been around for a few years now as Blhebubble, and they haven’t blocked it.
There’s a couple other bridge services out there too, and those haven’t been blocked… Yet.
Dont see how they could. The servers are real apple devices. Apple has no way to know if this is a mac from a real user or somebody proposing a message bridging service to non apple users. Dont see why they’d care either as they make money from the purchased server infrastructure.
This sounds like The Onion, ridiculous.
This is dumb. For two reasons:
- the fact that a messenging service locks users into an ecosystem.
- the fact that to use this an apple device is still used in the background. This means you log in with your apple id on a device that does not belong to you and that can possibly read all of your messages.
I’m still curious if this is even legal. It seems like a really good idea, but is Apple going to be able to sue over it? I almost feel like it could be covered under the reverse engineering clause, because it is meant to enable interoperability with another product. But Apple’s terms of service already seem really hamstrung on what is and is not allowed. With the macOS SLA beginning with:
For use on Apple-branded Systems
Obviously iMessage isn’t macOS, and I can’t seem to find a specific terms of service for iMessage specifically, but it is running on it. Which is what would make this integration possible. So what makes me wonder if Apple’s lawyers could find a clause there.
