Beeper Mini on Android claims to have reverse-engineered iMessage compatibility

Co-founder says it's a security improvement for everyone and should be legal.

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[bryanlarsen]

So I’m an iPhone user and I use iMessage because it seems convenient and it’s what my family uses.

However, if I were not an iPhone user it wouldn’t even occur to me to use third party apps to try and use iMessage to get the coveted blue (who gives a shit). Partially due to security/privacy concerns, and partially because I want my messages to be delivered reliably, not only until Apple figures out how to patch it’s system.

SMS, email, signal and telegram all work just fine, with WhatsApp and FB/Instagram messenger being fine apart from their ownership.

I'm going to be spending the $2. I don't care about blue bubbles, but I do want the pictures I send and receive not to be massively overcompressed to the point that I can't read the sign or menu or whatever that was just texted to me.

 

[idontliketopickusernames]

He has no satisfying answers to the "won't Apple just block this?" question.

The real answer is it's complicated. If you go into the Discord channel where all this was reverse engineered they'll have more technical explanations. But from what I gathered if Apple blocks the way this works, they would subsequently break iMessage for all iPhones prior to one of the more recent models. They would also break iMessage for almost all international iMessage users. It's not as simple as patching something. I'm wishy washy on whether Apple will move to break it but if they do it will probably take some number of years to do so.

Edit: Forgot a word.

 

[cucumberragingbull]

Apple's rcs implementation doesn't include e2e encryption.. And this system can presumably deregister as well as register, and I doubt Apple will nerf deregistration..

Apples RCS implementation won’t have encryption because it’s not part of the standard.

They have stated that they plan to work with the other GSMA members to get encryption included in the standard.

 

[privatefrontier]

WTF... even if all the ifs already mentioned can be answered or worked around, who in their right mind would pay $2/month to securely message an iOS user, when there are free alternatives that offer more features (ie. video capability)?

In fairness $2/month isn't terrible and they also allow you to self-host the server yourself for free. It's also built on the matrix API and uses community managed bridges that already exist. I'm of the mind that if they offer self-hosting, it's fine to charge to maintain their workforce and turn a profit.

EDIT: I was completely wrong. This is a separate app from their previous beeper cloud (formerly beeper) which they have open sourced.

 

[ip_what]

Two things I predict: Apple will shut this down and/or offer him and NDA/position with their Android integration group. (not that it exists to adopt Android but to convince Android users to Get An Iphone..drink AAPL juice!

Apple doesn’t need this guy to make Android devices iMessage-capable. If they wanted to do it, they would have already. Apple might be interested to make this go away, but now that there’s a demonstration that this can be done, there’s probably a whack-a-mole game coming up.

On the other hand, if I were WhatsAp… I’d be seriously exploring acquiring them for thousands of dollars per user now, (cheap), rather than tens of dollars per user when Beeper has millions of users (expensive)

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

So just use SMS?

I'm with you, but some people are not being completely accurate when they say, "all we want to do is talk with friends and family." What they really mean is they want to send high-resolution images and video, audio messages, stickers, reaction gifs, etc., basically, things that require higher-level, more-capable protocols. They're not content with sending text messages.

 

[Fred Duck]

Our viewpoint starts from how Apple is forcing iPhone users to send unencrypted messages to Android users.

That's a rather disingenuous way of phrasing it. Apple know what iMessage can handle. They're not in charge of SMS, MMS, RCS, HMS, or whatever the present lingua franca is between carriers. iMessage is currently only available on Apple devices so if you wish to send a message from an Apple device to a non-Apple device, they simply use that lowest common denominator; it's not that they're bent on preventing encryption.

Apple are not google. They didn't embrace and extend messaging and pretend it's a standard the way google have done with their monopoly browser.

If Migicovsky is using such weak reasoning, I am sceptical of his company.

 

[TappedOut]

Business Model:
1. Invest $$ in breaking into walled garden
2. Here, Tech Giant, are my balls in your hands
3. ???
4. Profit!

 

[tumblrfan69]

To me, it's less about the blue coloring, and more the other features like group chats, high-resolution images and video and voice messages, stickers and GIFs, reply threads, and sent/delivered/read/typing status.

Like, this is what I see on Android when someone on iPhone "reacts" to my message (I was recovering from a cold):
View attachment 69018

It's small, but it's annoying.

Ideally, I'd rather Apple start supporting an open standard like RCS instead of people hacking into their proprietary protocol and system, since it'd be nice if there was something better than SMS/MMS that people could reliably count on everyone with a cell phone number having.

Good thing Apple announced they were gonna support RCS.

Unfortunately for Android users, they're supporting actual RCS and not gMessage, Google's RCS with proprietary extensions.

 

[Peevester]

iMessage spammers are going to crack open that APK to figure out how they did this. Then there will be a flood of iMessage spam, and Apple will have “no choice” but to block their reverse-engineering.

Since spammers can send sms messages a million ways already, I don't see the advantage of using beeper - I am no more likely to believe a scammer because their stupid messages are blue.

I am really surprised that Apple didn't do something in their registration service that only idevices can respond to, though. likely this works because of backwards compatibility, from before all idevices had Secure Enclaves.

 

[Dr_EluSivE]

As an android user, I could care less what color my bubble is for iPhone users. What would be nice though is if attachments from iDevices didnt look like trash. Over here in android land Im just assuming iPhones have terrible cameras because everything I get from one looks 320x240 rez. Is this a seperate messaging app Just for idevices or do all my RCS messages come through it too?

 

[cucumberragingbull]

Hmm, I thought Google’s spec for rcs has had encryption in it for years, but the telcos have been dragging their feet on implementing that part of the spec (like Apple)?

Google’s spec is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is the GSMA one which doesn't include encryption.

The telcos would be insane to differ from the GSMA spec.

 

[twilightomni]

Major props to this kid for publishing a Python source repository.

 

[stillanalog]

I should preface this by saying I'm not one of them.. but lots of people do. From my much-younger siblings, who have told me they all (jokingly) say "ew" when they see a green bubble text, to Apple themselves (see the memo in the article).

To technically literate people, it likely doesn't matter as much. But we'd do well to remember we're a small minority. My wife gets almost irrationally angry when she sends me videos of our dogs and I show her the blocky, VGA-resolution video that I received. Explanations of all the layers that Apple puts into iMessage to abstract away the details of sharing high-resolution videos and photos are lost on her. To her and I'm sure many others, the green bubble says "hey, shit's not going to work right when you're communicating with this person."

Which is exactly what Apple wanted. These are classic in-group/out-group dynamics. For those who don't know, this sort of stuff is kind of a big deal to most humans.

When I went to middle school there were classic in and out group dynamics between the kids with generic MP3 players and those whose parents had money for an iPod. Then we went to high school and the kid whose daddy bought him a Mercedes showed us that we could up our social exclusionary game to a whole new level.

My point is, it’s human nature, not something we can blame on Apple or Mercedes or whatever company is making a desirable expensive trendy product.

 

[Peevester]

So what's new then?

Beeper renamed to beeper mini?

Previously it was green and now blue? But even when it was green, still have the same imessage features as right now, just it's now blue?

The difference is you don't need a Mac, and you don't have to give a third party your apple ID, unlike beeper itself. That'a pretty huge. I wouldn't pay 2 bucks a month for it, though.

 

[stillanalog]

I don't care about the blue, I don't want all my shit compressed in chat because I'm not on Apple

But Apple built iMessage to facilitate communication between people on Apple devices (Aka their paying customers). Why do you expect them to also provide high quality features to Android, instead of switching to a different platform?

 

[mmiller7]

I'll just wait for RCS. I use Google Messages on my Android as well as their web interface on my Windows computer - switching back and forth between Messages and Beeper depending on what kind of device the other user has is just too annoying

I hate RCS...seemed like when I got a new phone that had RCS I started getting a mountain of spam (mostly USPS scams from UK prefixes?) multiple times a day. I disabled RCS and it almost completely stopped.

Idk what's gained by it, but regular SMS and Email seems sufficient for people who aren't willing to get on a cross-platform app...

 

[Coppercloud]

In other news, isn't apple going to soon start supporting RCS? Still might be a green bubble, but most of the basic features should be getting added I think?

 

[Deleted member 521511]

But Apple built iMessage to facilitate communication between people on Apple devices. Why do you expect them to also provide high quality features to Android, instead of switching to a different platform?

Okay. So if Apple uses SMS fallback and the videos/images are compressed to the point of uselessness, why when i send the same files android-to-android using SMS are those files the exact same as when they were sent? High quality service is worthy of providing use to, but here it seems it's an intentional degradation.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

In other news, isn't apple going to soon start supporting RCS? Still might be a green bubble, but most of the basic features should be getting added I think?

Yes.

https://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/2023/11/apple-announces-rcs-support-for-imessage/

 

[torok]

Guys, it's not about "blue bubbles". It's about reactions, and typing indicators, and read receipts, and videos, and photos, and replying from your laptop, and everything else. Talking about bubble color is just a way to be cute about the whole thing.

And Apple can block this, sure, but they will also have to update their own messenger. Apple has a great update mechanism, but it's not foolproof. People still wait weeks (or years!) to update, so whatever they do still can't break any existing client. No one will tolerate not being to iMessage grandma (on her iPhone) because she hasn't updated since the last attempt to stamp out Android.

 

[stillanalog]

Okay. So if Apple uses SMS fallback and the videos/images are compressed to the point of uselessness, why when i send the same files android-to-android using SMS are those files the exact same as when they were sent? High quality service is worthy of providing use to, but here it seems it's an intentional degradation.

I have no experience sending files over SMS. However, for what it’s worth, Telegram seems to absolutely butcher image quality, turn all photos into 1MB max files. And yet, I find it adequate for most snapshot sharing.

and, shockingly, I know of plenty of (Eastern European) iPhone users who prefer using telegram amongst each other.

If you know that sending files per sms doesn’t work well maybe use another application?

 

[heartburnkid]

I recall using Meebo in 2006/7 which tied in almost all of the chat apps at the time into a single AJAX web app. It was pretty revolutionary and useful at the time and also added features that didn't exist in the native clients.

That got swallowed up into Google, unfortunately. Though I can't see any reason why this can't be made secure. I also can't see any reason for there not to be a secure app that links accounts like this though there it'd be costly to create and maintain.

Same here. Back in the day, I was a Trillian user, which rolled all the popular IM formats of the time (AIM, ICQ, etc) into one app. I've longed for the day when something similar existed in our current phone landscape.

Those were the wild west days of the web, though, before terms like "walled garden" and "enshittification" entered our lexicon.

 

[heartburnkid]

Okay. So if Apple uses SMS fallback and the videos/images are compressed to the point of uselessness, why when i send the same files android-to-android using SMS are those files the exact same as when they were sent? High quality service is worthy of providing use to, but here it seems it's an intentional degradation.

If you're sending Android-to-Android, you're probably using RCS, not SMS. SMS/MMS has very low file size limits that necessitate some level of degradation (though, of course, some apps can degrade images more gracefully and less noticeably than others)

 

[jjpaq]

I give it two weeks before Apple starts requiring registration requests to include a token based on whatever encryption hardware is built into iPhones, or even just a valid iPhone IMEI (temporarily or permanently blacklisting any that get reused too often). From my understanding of what they're doing, that would kill their entire method on the spot.

 

[jjpaq]

I hope Apple blocks this shit ASAP!!! Especially since it's "reverse-engineered", sounds like a hack that needs to be DMCA'ed into oblivion!

"Reverse-engineering", oh yeah, that notorious hacking method called "looking at something to figure out how it works".

If Apple sets up a publicly-accessible server whose purpose is to receive and process properly-formatted requests for certain numbers to be treated as iMessage numbers, it's not illegal to send that server legitimate requests matching its purpose. If Apple wants their server's behaviour to align with their business model and PR statements ("only iPhones can use iMessage"), they are perfectly entitled to make that happen.

 

[Artemis-kun]

I like how there's all these comments about it being more than just the colour involved, but for the average user who apparently cares about this nonsense, that is literally all they care about. Not like we don't have much bigger fish to fry, or anything. I weep for humanity's future when this is the sort of thing that gets the attention.

 

[krimhorn]

I recall using Meebo in 2006/7 which tied in almost all of the chat apps at the time into a single AJAX web app. It was pretty revolutionary and useful at the time and also added features that didn't exist in the native clients.

Trillian before that was my go-to in the even earlier 00's. This is what annoys me the most about the modern chat landscape: we've been through this multiple times before. It's supremely annoying to have to keep up on whatever the latest chat app fad is if/when everyone you know swaps to it. New accounts to make, new things to learn, old things to unlearn. If interoperability were just mandated then it wouldn't matter and I could use $whatever_app while others use their preferred app to converse.

 

[Hoptimist]

Have you ever tried to have this conversation with a typical iPhone imessage user?

Must be folks by you are different. I have 2 messaging apps, wife has at least three, daughter has at least three. That doesn't include apps like Discord. This is for iPhones in the US (northeast). Is your experience a regional thing?

 

[idontliketopickusernames]

I like how there's all these comments about it being more than just the colour involved, but for the average user who apparently cares about this nonsense, that is literally all they care about. Not like we don't have much bigger fish to fry, or anything. I weep for humanity's future when this is the sort of thing that gets the attention.

The reason they care about the color is precisely all the other stuff that comes with it. Whether the average user knows it's encryption, high res media, reactions, etc. is another story. But it is most definitely all those other things that made them care about the color.

 

[Castellum Excors]

But Apple built iMessage to facilitate communication between people on Apple devices (Aka their paying customers). Why do you expect them to also provide high quality features to Android, instead of switching to a different platform?

This is important in an interesting way. Apple found a way to provide value to their customers. And Android users want to benefit from this economy without providing literally any capital to this ecosystem. And they get irritated that their experience is not as "high quality" as paying customers in that environment. And they'd seemingly pay a monthly fee to a third-party source so that they can both participate in something they have no hand in contributing to and not change out their own ecosystem.

Basically it boils down to "I want what you have without contributing" like they deserve or are owed access simply because they exist. And they act like they are second class citizens because of it. Ah, greed, it's not just limited to Big Business, it also comes in small packages.

 

[Gigaflop]

As an android family that just got it's first iphone for my eldest kid, this is a real problem.

Apple kneecaps group chats that include green bubbles. It effectively screws over everyone else who's in the chat with the green bubbles. Terrible picture/video sharing, no renaming, emojis, all of it screwed for everyone.

So what ends up happening is the kids form a chat room that excludes the green bubbles so that they can have full functionality, and maybe have a second one with green bubbles. But then most of the actual talk moves into the blue-bubble-only chat, ostracizing the green bubbles.

In order to prevent my kid's social life from being killed because they're ostracized from all of the group chats (as if middle school isn't hard enough for kids already), I bought the first family iphone. The setup was an infuriating nightmare hellscape due to parental controls that don't work if you don't have a parent with an iDevice, but it's done.

It's infuriating, but it's done.

 

[Not Sid Haig]

For me, it's not about the blue vs. green color bubbles - it's about finally getting pictures and videos from iPhone-loving family members (namely, much older relatives) in a resolution that isn't 20 years old. Yes, I've gotten them to install other apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Yes, they even use them, but only to talk to me one-on-one. Yes, I've told them (several times) what happens if they include me in group chats of mixed-phone-OS company.

And yet, I cannot for the life of me get them to remember how and why the images and video they send look like garbage. At this point, I give up. Not enough to switch to an iPhone, but enough to consider something like this. It speaks to the obnoxious bullshit Apple pulls to make life outside their walled garden as annoying as possible, but honestly, I can only react to the reality of the situation, and this is currently the easiest, cheapest, and most transparent (to my family members) method of making my life a bit easier.

Does it suck? Yes. Do I have the power to do anything else? Not that I can see.