Sunbird Shuts Down iMessage App for Android Over Security Concerns

[DMG35]

That had nothing to do with OnePlus. Nothing Phone wanted to implement it. The founder of OnePlus, Carl Pei, started Nothing Phone, but has left OnePlus since a few years.

Lol totally my bad. I was playing with a OnePlus open when I wrote that. I meant Nothing of course.

 

[GermanSuplex]

To my knowledge, I have never needed to provide my Apple credentials to anyone other than Apple. Huge red flag.

 

[dominiongamma]

lol who thought this was a good idea

People on here did

 

[danpass]

and found that it is sending a user's Apple ID credentials to a Sunbird server, where those credentials are authenticated using a virtual machine running macOS.

that's a workaround ... not a system

-

 

[Shirasaki]

You can still send messages from any phone to iPhone so what was the use case for such app? Green or blue should not matter for someone sending the message.

I blame Apple and the US squarely for this pointless and meaningless status symbol debate and issues caused by it.

Enjoy your new freedoms Europe. There will be more of this in due time coming your way in 2024.

Enjoy your walled garden with even higher walls and fewer freedoms, while EU folks use their phones as a smartphone, not just a phone.

Apps have no access to iMessages tho

No access, according to Apple. There is no telling whether it is true or not.

 

[seek3r]

This is the least shocking development of this story possible, except maybe in *how* bad their security procedures were

 

[svish]

Not expecting to see it coming back anytime soon

 

[magdogg]

Enjoy your new freedoms Europe. There will be more of this in due time coming your way in 2024.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

 

[GadgetBen]

If you used this with your Apple ID you are dumb.

 

[MuppetGate]

This has absolutely nothing to do with the EU.

I’m pretty sure it was the expectation that Apple would have to comply with EU law ( the one demanding message service interoperability) that encouraged them to attempt such an asinine solution so they could be first to market.

 

[MuppetGate]

I blame Apple and the US squarely for this pointless and meaningless status symbol debate and issues caused by it.

Enjoy your walled garden with even higher walls and fewer freedoms, while EU folks use their phones as a smartphone, not just a phone.

Enjoy your iPhone laden with software stealing your data and money, while scammers buy yachts on your dime.

But if you’re an Android user, you’re probably enjoying that already.

 

[bousozoku]

It's weird how multiple ways to do iMessage on android were shut down in such a short period of time. I wonder if Apple had something to do with it behind the scenes.

They were probably all counting on one person to figure out how to do it and that person wasn't able.

 

[laptech]

Looks like Sunbird and Nothing got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Both companies stock piling everything users of the app does and not encrypting it thus allowing employees and others to see what is going on. This was no error on either companies part. It was intentional in my opinion, is just that the companies do not have very good app designers who didn't hide their intentions very well.

 

[Shirasaki]

Enjoy your iPhone laden with software stealing your data and money, while scammers buy yachts on your dime.

But if you’re an Android user, you’re probably enjoying that already.

Not to be outdone, I already experienced those above in the past, all while under full walled garden of iOS.

Bruh.

 

[NightFox]

...As noted: iMessage users who received messages from One Phone user became compromised.

Where did you get that from please? If that is true, then it means there must be a vulnerability in iMessage itself as Sunbird was effectively just a man-in-the-middle relay service which had no more access to the iMessage platform than any end user would.

 

[mazz0]

All this fuss and commotion with workaround apps just to send a text message jeez. If a green bubble friend sends me a gif or photo, I can still see it just fine and vice versa. If we must absolutely have the raw quality studio shot of the funny thing I saw at the grocery store checkout line, I can send an email, where they will get near real time notifications just the same.

Group chats.

 

[D-a-a-n]

Wild that anyone may have bought the Nothing phone based on the promise that it could send / receive iMessages

Those kind of people will probably run into more sh*t in the future.

 

[Mikeske]

I never understood what the deal was about trying to messages from Apple to a Android or going the opposite after all the old meaning was a text message and not all the extra features as for the most part I send a text it will be typed out and all I want is it to be secure and private

 

[jdavid_rp]

If you grant something full disk access on macOS, then it does.
iMessages are stored in a SQLite database in `~/Library/Messages/chat.db` without any extra encryption (besides the full disk encryption).
So apparently it's not that big of a deal anyways even after you enable sideloading on iOS.

Sideloading is not allowing full access and it’s not something new. If you have Xcode installed on Mac you can sideload apps and they last 7 days and then you have to resign them again. The actual change is that Apple would need to disable the expiration of 7 days.

If they for some reason bring full disk access, they would be resurrecting the jailbreak scene 😂

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

Who would have seen that coming except literally everyone?

 

[darngooddesign]

It's weird how multiple ways to do iMessage on android were shut down in such a short period of time. I wonder if Apple had something to do with it behind the scenes.

The article points out how none of them were secure.

 

[darngooddesign]

I blame Apple and the US squarely for this pointless and meaningless status symbol debate and issues caused by it.

Enjoy your walled garden with even higher walls and fewer freedoms, while EU folks use their phones as a smartphone, not just a phone.

No access, according to Apple. There is no telling whether it is true or not.

All the green color denotes is SMS. I’ve sent texts to another iPhone user which displayed green because for some reason the iMessage part failed so it sent as the SMS backup.

 

[TwoBytes]

So Apple shut it down to make Nothing into ...nothing?

 

[JosephAW]

Almost as secure as side loading. Why didn't anyone warn us?

 

[magdogg]

I’m pretty sure it was the expectation that Apple would have to comply with EU law ( the one demanding message service interoperability) that encouraged them to attempt such an asinine solution so they could be first to market.

I disagree, the reason is that android phone brands are a bit desparate to get around the green bubble stigma, which really mostly is a thing in the US.