Android iMessage app Beeper releases working update of blue-bubbled tool

The developer behind Beeper Mini just released an updated version of the standalone Android app that users say can sidestep the block Apple put in place over the weekend. The app was built specifically to send and receive blue bubble messages with Apple's iPhones, and the fresh version was released to the Google Play store …

[Lord Elpuss]

"US senator Elizabeth Warren weighed in on the debate and argued: "Green bubble texts are less secure. So why would Apple block a new app allowing Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage?"

You know full well why; competitive differentiation.

The only thing worse than a rich, greedy, power hungry, soundbite-addicted tech corporation is a rich, greedy, power hungry, soundbite-addicted senator.

[Charlie Clark]

What is competitive about Apple's messaging app? In fact, this is anti-competitive behaviour.

Add to that, if someone has managed to reverse engineer message protocl and encryption, anyone using them should be worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's implementation is secure knowing how it works shouldn't compromise that security.

[Charlie Clark]

Being able to reverse engineer protocol and encryption that are both proprietary suggests that neither are secure.

[Anonymous Coward]

The encryption algorithms aren't proprietary it's RSA or Elliptic Curve depending on version and AES. You can go to the GitHub and get the Python proof of concept and Beepers own software.

Also it not like flaws haven't been found before this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/johns-hopkins-researchers-discovered-encryption-flaw-in-apples-imessage/2016/03/20/a323f9a0-eca7-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html

[doublelayer]

"What is competitive about Apple's messaging app?"

It's kind of the point of having one. If they introduce more features, like even more ways to have emojis involved when you don't need them, then maybe someone will want that and buy a device that lets them access it. I'm sure there's also some hope that people will be too afraid of their messages showing up in green bubbles instead of blue ones so they won't leave for Android, but their messages will still show up in the same app for others, so there's not much difficulty with that shift. People have a significantly larger difficulty if I ask them to use Signal to contact me, yet many people on both Android and IOS have managed it.

[Autonomous Comrade]

And everyone gets blue bubbles there*

* Terms and conditions apply - messages recieved may actually come back in a black/grey colour and only your outgoing messages show in blue/your theme colour

[Lord Elpuss]

@Charlie Clark

”What is competitive about Apple's messaging app? In fact, this is anti-competitive behaviour.“

The iMessage protocol is Apple’s IP; no company has an intrinsic right to use it. Protecting your IP and your competitive differentiation is not anti-competitive; in fact, if there are security implications then Apple are pretty much obliged to close the loophole.

[DS999]

Spam is the biggest reason

If anyone can send messages to Apple customers then spammers could send us a bunch of crap. One of the nice things about iMessage is that there is zero spam, since if e.g. scammers started sending stuff via iMessage Apple can simply cut off their Apple ID and they are cut off from iMessage. If Apple has no recourse to cut someone off then spammers will flood into iMessage - as a more affluent user base on average they would be a very attractive target.

Apple is well within their rights to cut off anyone who finds a way to fool iMessage into accepting messages from those who don't own an Apple device. There is no reason they should be forced to open it up to the world when there are countless cross platform messaging alternatives available on the app store as well as elsewhere. If Apple didn't allow Whatsapp, Signal, etc. apps from the app store that would be a different matter, but they do so there is no room to complain that Apple should allow anyone who wants to to send iMessages.

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Spam is the biggest reason

I see you've been downvoted by 2 spammers...

[Headwesty]

Green and proud!

Couldn't care less if my messages to iFans are green so long as they are rich... (in the Text sense, not Corporate or Senatorial!)

[Dan 55]

Re: Green and proud!

Why is the colour of fucking chat message bubbles such a trauma for USAians?

[sabroni]

Re: Why is the colour of fucking chat message bubbles such a trauma for USAians?

It's not the colour so much as what the colours represent. Blue for 'private message', green for 'anyone with a network connection can read this'.

[Dan 55]

Re: Why is the colour of fucking chat message bubbles such a trauma for USAians?

I thought it meant "Android owning pauper who isn't in the cool gang and breaks your lovely group messages" and Tim Apple means it to stay that way.

[DS999]

Re: Why is the colour of fucking chat message bubbles such a trauma for USAians?

Blue for 'private message', green for 'anyone with a network connection can read this'.

No, that's not what it means. Originally the Messages app supported only SMS, and everything was green. When Apple created iMessage they decided they wanted to denote those messages by a different color, they chose blue.

Sure today iMessage is secure and SMS is not, so you can infer that secure / not secure thing from the colors today. But the iMessage/other color split will always exist, even if Apple adds RCS support and the global RCS standard (as opposed to Google's version of it that relies on their own servers) is updated to support end to end encryption those secure RCS messages will still be green because they are not iMessages.

[heyrick]

taken steps to shut down the Beeper party and indicated that it would continue to do so

Is this not anti-corrosive?

Actually, I swiped out "anti-competitive" but my phone thought I meant "anti-corrosive", and to be honest, for once I think it's right.

[Knightlie]

Re: taken steps to shut down the Beeper party and indicated that it would continue to do so

Not sure how. Anyone can still message iOS users from any other phone. I reckon the colour of a message bubble is a way smaller issue than the anti-Apple-tards think it is. And Apple are perfectly entitled to protect their systems from intrusion by this idiot - as an Apple customer I'd DEMAND they do just that.

As for security, people who want that will be using Signal anyway.

[sabroni]

Re: anti-Apple-tards

Aww, was the nasty website mean to your favourite mega corp?

[doublelayer]

Re: taken steps to shut down the Beeper party and indicated that it would continue to do so

They have arguments for why it's not. The two components are the following:

The method used was breaking security measures quite a lot. It allowed any person, unauthenticated, to send a message into the iMessage network. The iMessage network is supposed to verify the sender so that you can't spoof the source of a message, and this bug allowed anyone to spoof. Thus, their patching it was to fix that problem. If they need to, and for the second reason I'm not sure they do, to pretend that they didn't do this to break other services, they have that legitimate security problem to explain the need to prevent the method from working.

The other reason they have is that they can claim that they already interoperate by having SMS, iMessage, and eventually RCS in one application that automatically manages it all. Therefore, if you can use iMessage or not, the only difference is the color of the bubble. The message will still arrive to the same place for any user. Any user can still message any phone number from that app. Therefore, they can claim that their application is already interoperable. They can also claim that they have no need to provide services to people who chose not to enter any agreement or purchase any product from them, so denying service to Android users is not anticompetitive any more than not keeping around Safari for Windows was anticompetitive. This argument is easier to debate, but it still requires us to define exactly what market they're restricting competition in and what responsibilities they have in that market. Restricting competition by breaking things is often an easier case than restricting it by not providing things, so it's not going to be an open and shut case.

[heyrick]

Re: taken steps to shut down the Beeper party and indicated that it would continue to do so

"so it's not going to be an open and shut case"

Never is. Then there's the appeal. And if that doesn't work, appealing the appeal, until the other party either runs out of money or dies of boredom...

[gnasher729]

I would have thought that using Apple’s infrastructure to send messages at Apple’s expense would be anti-competitive. (To a very tiny degree).

Since apple says they cannot read their own users encrypted messages, it seems obvious they cannot read messages from third parties that go through the same system. But I wonder who encrypts these third party messages. Is it the users phone or this company’s servers?And I read they want to know your AppleId? That’s absolutely between me and apple.

[doublelayer]

"I read they want to know your AppleId? That’s absolutely between me and apple."

Since you have to log into the iMessage systems with it, how did you expect to do it otherwise? To send a message, you have to have an account. The exploit that let them get around that was blocked for bypassing that requirement. Now, it's akin to being unhappy that a mail client requires your email address and password. Admittedly, I don't know whether I trust this company to treat those credentials well, but I'm not surprised that they need them to make the service work.

[gnasher729]

My appleid and password allow to do lots of things. That is not something you would ever hand over to anyone but apple. It’s not an iMessage account, it’s an everything apple account.

[doublelayer]

I get the risk, although things like a GMail account have a similar level of vulnerability to a password leak. I still fall back to asking what the other option would be. The exploit used last week was unauthenticated, but Apple blocked it and it's not coming back. With that gone, I don't think there's any doubt that any other unauthenticated methods that may exist will also be blocked when Apple becomes aware that someone is using them. Thus, if you're going to use something like this, you will have to enter credentials somewhere. That's enough for me not to use this app, but you speak as though there's another option and I don't see what it is.

[shaquille.oatmeal]

BBM

Remember the days of BBM where you HAD to have a blackberry to use it?

Don't see how this is much different. If you want something, you go buy the device that enables you to have what you want.

[schultzter]

Re: BBM

If BBM had released Android and iphone clients early on we could have avoided all of this!

[Roopee]

Why Blue?

I’ve never understood why iMessage shows Apple messages in blue - I’ve never seen a blue apple, lots of green ones though, so it’s always been counterintuitive to me. Also, more importantly, why can’t I decide for myself what colour my messages are...?

Mine’s the one with my daily apple in the pocket (usually red incidentally), and a purple iPhone in the other pocket :)