Last week we told you about Beeper Mini, an Android app that sends real iMessages. Unlike other services that route your messages to a Mac server farm (which requires them to have your login token), Beeper claims to have reverse-engineered Apple’s iMessage routing system and could make believing the servers that a message came from a real Apple. product.
Like other services, Beeper does not receive iCloud login information or manage its own servers. Instead, the team reverse-engineered iMessage and tricked Apple’s servers into believing that messages from Beeper Mini were actually messages from Messages on an iPhone. It worked very well and the company was confident that it was on the right side of the law and that Apple couldn’t easily block Beeper Mini without also blocking iMessages sent from iPhones. Beeper was so confident that he went so far as to open source much of his code.
It appears that trust was misplaced, as it took Apple two days to effectively shut down the app. As reported on TechCruch, messages on Beeper Mini started receiving errors stating “server search failed: search request timed out” on Saturday. When TechCrunch asked Beeper CEO Eric Migikovsky if Apple had found a way to break the connection with its app, he replied: “Yes, all the data points to that.” » Then, Apple confirmed that it had indeed closed the loophole used by Beeper and would do it again if Beeper found another one:
At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and security technologies designed to put users in control of their data and protect their personal information. We’ve taken steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit false credentials to gain access to iMessage. These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential to expose metadata and enable spam, spam, and phishing attacks. We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users.
This brings us full circle once again for those looking to somehow enable iMessages on Android phones. Either you’re putting your privacy and security at risk (like the recent Nothing Chats/Sunbird disaster), or you’re relying on a hack that Apple will almost certainly shut down immediately.
If you want a better texting experience between your iPhone and those with Android phones, you’ll have to wait until RCS comes to Apple devices later next year.
