Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper’s ‘iMessage to Android’ solution::U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage,
I wish Apple would just release an iMessage app for Android and be done with it.
Why would they do that? The point is exclusivity to foster peer pressure to all be on iPhone. Google offered to integrate with iMessage and vice versa, so that consumers would have the best experience regardless of platform, ages ago. Apple declined, and then removed some of Googles office suite apps from their store.
Step 1) use peer pressure to get teens on platform
Step 2) vendor lock-in to keep them as lifetime customers
Step 3) profit
You need the dumb parents to participate. If parents just said “no, you’re getting an android”, this wouldn’t be a problem. Parents are complicit.
And how does that stop bullying?
Kids are monsters. Nothing you ever do will stop bullying at school. Humans will always find a reason to hurt each other.
They would do that because they suddenly changed their mind about their strategy needing to keep things as proprietary as possible. It’s unlikely, but apple did do that to a degree with osx
Not how capitalism works. Sadly
They specifically don’t want to do this. They’ve admitted that they want peer pressure to support and bolster their iPhone sales.
It’s super fucked up.
What’s the point of asking questions when this community just downvotes? Why even have a forum if it’s only use is to.upvote things that agree with your pre established opinions?
I’m having a brain fart, what movie is this from again? I remember the scene but can’t remember the movie
I, Robot
Your primary contribution to this conversation is to bitch about how no one engages with you? I see users responding to you but then all you are responding back with is editing your comment to say “thanks for answering”? Idk man… maybe it’s your approach to dialogue. Being super dismissive and retaliatory tends to bring downvotes.
I had asked the same question and was downvoted to -10 before I deleted it and reposted it. It’s an issue I’ve been seeing in this community growing for a while now, so yeah I’m gonna bitch when this place starts turning into reddit.
Oh I see. Didn’t realize you’d already deleted it. Anyway, best of luck; I think you bring up valid complaints but idk why the vitriol. This crowd is much less annoying than what’s found in some similar forums. Don’t let the downvotes bother you too much.
It’s not so much me being upset at fake internet points than it is at me being upset that I’ve been seeing how this place has changed since I joined, and it’s super easy for a place like this to become an echo chamber, especially when people are just asking questions. Genuine discussion is drowned out by people treating the vote system like Facebook likes
I wanted out of reddit long before the fiasco, and whenni got here it was way different than it’s starting to become
Very much with you on that stance. However, this “bubble battle” is very much an echo chamber scenario, regardless where it’s discussed.
Heck, let me just ask you directly: why does Apple maintain such a divisive stance on the subject?
I haven’t gotten much (on several forums) regarding that question, more than “they choose too”.
My only guess is that they developed a proprietary system and as a business want to maintain control of their proprietary system as one of the selling points to their hardware ecosystem. It makes them money, and a business in a capitalist market, they want to keep their competitive edge.
Which, honestly, I get. Imagine you created something (and note, not invented) and someone decides you should be forced to share it simply because it sells better than what the other guys have.
My only argument against this is that there already are internet based end to end encryption messaging systems in place, both private and FOSS. It’s not like Apple has a monopoly on this type of technology or system.
Yes but imagine in an established system, let’s use the US mail as an example, I create a stamp that meets the criteria of postage stamps but also (somehow; after all it is proprietary) requires the opening of the mailed parcel to be contingent upon something like watching an ad, or “signing in” unless you have a subscription at my fancy new parcel stamp company…
I would imagine that most of us would not want to simply “accept this new ecosystem” and would struggle with legitimizing it.
The sunken cost fallacy comes to mind; as those who have “subscribed” to such a business model don’t perceive themselves as inconvenienced… And only when comparing themselves to those who aren’t subscribed could they even know the shady business model even exists!
In the end, it feels like Apple is intentionally creating systemic division so that it’s customer base feels like they are a part of something exclusive (even if said exclusive content/system doesn’t appear to serve them in any way other than “feeling exclusive”).
Apple could very easily mitigate the echo chamber they have created. But they created it to serve the Apple shareholders, alone.
No?
If it accessed the message system directly then it makes sense. They’re was one just before it that ran on Mac mini farms.
They’re was one just before it that ran on Mac mini farms.
Pretty much every other service ran on what I assume are MacOS VMs, because buying a $3k MacBook for every user would not make sense.
BlueBubbles, Sunbird, Beeper, etc.
I have such a love/hate relationship with my senator.
- She basically brought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into existence, which helps TONS of people not get fucked over by banks and stuff
- Simultaneously, she tends to support corporatist stuff a frustrating amount of the time, and (similar to how Feinstein was, but not quite as bad) doesn’t really know what she’s talking about when it comes to tech and the nuances involved
Edit: to be clear, this isn’t me doing a “hail corporate” and saying Apple is categorically in the right here - simply that there are a LOT more technical complexities going on here than the (reductive) statement Warren made seems to indicate
Get the fuck out of here with your nuance. You have no business being on the internet.
/s (in case it isn’t obvious)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Warren, an advocate for stricter antitrust enforcement, posted her support for Beeper on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple would restrict a competitor.
In explaining its decision to cut off Beeper’s access to its servers, Apple said that it took “steps to steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.” It also suggested that Beeper’s techniques “posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.”
In addition, Cupertino-based tech giant argued against Beeper’s security, saying it was not able to verify that messages sent through unauthorized means were able to maintain the end-to-end encryption iMessage offers.
Beeper, however, claims it was able to offer the same level of encryption as iMessage uses, but did not put its app through a third-party security audit prior to its launch, which would have strengthened its argument.
As of its most recent update on Sunday, the startup posted that work continues on the outage and it hopes to “have good news to share soon.”
Beeper Mini, then, became an app that focused solely on bringing iMessage to Android for $1.99/month, with the intention of expanding its capabilities over time.
The original article contains 474 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If this sparks an interoperability discussion (and actions) in the USA, it’ll be ironic for Apple who might escape interoperability in the EU.
Did Beeper clear its usage of the iMessage platform with Apple? Sign a contract? Get an SLA agreement with Apple in writing?
I was under the impression that they found essentially a back door/work around to latch into the iMessage platform… in that case this is no different than Cisco patching some routers or MS fixing a security hole. If anything I’d be more annoyed that Apple didn’t patch it quicker.
I’d love to be able to use iMessage with my android friends, but Beeper’s methods seemed sketchy as hell.
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While it’s not mostly about security, and I generally agree that Apple’s dickitry with regard to iMessage should end (they’d be doing a solid in the US to just release an Android client and monetize via sticker packs or something like it) there is most certainly a security risk for Apple to allow a reverse-engineering of their spec to spoof real iPhones, which is how Beeper works.:
pypush is a POC demo of my recent iMessage reverse-engineering. It can currently register as a new device on an Apple ID, set up encryption keys, and send and receive iMessages!
Now, your quote and the others in this thread:
Beeper didn’t find a security hole, nothing was compromised for Apple.
They sure as fuck did, lol. iMessage isn’t public, it’s not intended to be used by anyone other than Apple, and the bandwidth and servers are not free. Its not as if every iMessage isn’t going through Apple’s servers, they’re paying for it. Though they didn’t find a technical hole like a zero day or compromise iMessage for customers, they absolutely found a security concern for Apple. If you walk in to your house, find your neighbor there grabbing a couple of eggs out of the fridge and they hand wave away and say “don’t worry I didn’t break a window, I just figured out you keep a spare key under the mat and also I’m going to use these to make cookies for the block party and I’m not going to charge a lot for them and only you have these eggs from your chicken you’re hogging them!” you’d kick them out in a hurry and probably call the cops.
So two things:
- We can absolutely be mad at Apple for the lock in effect of iMessage, there were some leaked emails a while ago that confirm what we all know, this is just there to prevent buying your kid a cheap android phone. Personally, I think if Apple was serious about keeping their customers secure, they’d either release an Android client or better, just make sure that the minimum spec for RCS supports E2EE for wide adoption. They can still have a more robust platform with iMessage, and it’s still going to integrate with Apple shit in a way that only they could do.
- Anyone, anywhere, who thought that this was a viable business for Beeper has lost their fucking minds. Their model was basically “trust me bro, we’re going to socially pressure Apple and that’s going to totally work” and while it sounds like they’re back up for now, it will be extremely surprising if it stays that way longer than another week or two. It would be akin to someone launching a business being like “well, we didn’t hack Microsoft/Google/Facebook, but we’re planning on hosting a bajillion users on their backend for free without their approval.”
It was an exploit that mimicked the device as apple hardware, but it wasent sketchy. Everything was still e2ee, with beeper having no access to any data.
It was the exact opposite of what the Nothing “middleman” did that was actually sketchy.
It was an exploit
…
but it wasent sketchy
Ah yes, businesses based on exploits. Very not sketchy.
It wasent a bug in software. As I understand it, they cloned an apple hardware ID.
They basically put on an “Im an apple!” mask and then used iMessage as expected. While an “exploit” it is not inherently a security issue.
Ah yes, businesses based on exploits. Very not sketchy.
Enabling interoperability in purposely walled gardens for the overall greater good of the Internet? Sounds like some good ol’ hackers spirit to me. If they make a few bucks while they do it, even better.
Yall realize youre on a tiny, open source network right now that employs the same kind of scrappy “do the right thing because it’s right” ethos, yeah? That at some point beeper might be a bridge to things like direct mastadon/iMessage/messenger/whatsapp/matrix compatibility?
Im rooting for them to keep it up.
I think you’re conflating two different things when it comes to my comment. While I can agree in spirit, and were someone to release a FOSS version of this that did the same thing, I’d go right along with you on the whole “hacker spirit” thing (like the kid who wrote the original exploit and put it up for free on GitHub), but that’s not what is happening here. This:
Enabling interoperability in purposely walled gardens for the overall greater good of the Internet?
is not what’s happening, this is Beeper just trying to make money basically selling fake ID’s so you can get into the club, and the whole “uwu I’m a wittle startup don’t hurt me Apple” is just marketing spin for what I have to imagine was the rather insane assumption on the part of Beeper that they thought they found something that was unpatchable, and/or that they could somehow publicly pressure Apple to not sue them out of existence for what is potentially a crime (laws against hacking usually don’t give a shit about the method you use to breech a system, just whether that use is authorized which this is clearly not.) Apple has reasonable claim to financial damage as well, since Beeper is using Apple’s servers/bandwidth without approval or compensation. Charitably, Beeper might be hoping that this gets the attention of regulators and they’ll legislate opening it up, but that ship has sailed in the EU, and the legal argument for doing it in the states is “we don’t like green bubbles” so I wouldn’t hold my breath, and even then assuming there is a will in the legislature to do this, I have a hard time seeing how Beeper stays funded long enough to see that law pass.
Anyway, I am not saying this because I personally don’t want to see iMessage on Android (realistically I’d like the RCS standards body to get their head out of their asses and relegate iMessage and the various Facebook messengers to irrelevance) what I am saying is that Beeper trying to pretend to be a real business is laughable. Like, this is the type of product I would expect to buy in an alternate App Store with bitcoin or something, not something I would expect a real business to release on purpose with all of the fanfare and 100k’s of downloads. It’s the technical equivalent of putting up a stand in front of Costco advertising that you’re going to print and sell fake cards so you can get into Costco, and you’re going to do that by plugging your printer setup into Costco’s power to do it. oh, and then when Costco cuts off power, you run an extension cord over to a different outlet. Like, you can argue that you think Costco should do away with membership, but we all see what an insane business plan that would be, right?
edit: This is a really good article from the Verge on the whole thing, but I’m afraid it’s more nuanced than “Apple BAD!” so ymmv.
Finally, some sanity. Just because it’s apple, doesn’t mean it’s okay to build a business model on piggybacking off their service. I know “apple bad” but I don’t get why people are defending Beeper.
I’ve only heard this particular stance from iPhone users.
Apple has done a stellar job propagandizing their brand as the “Good guys… just looking out for their customer’s best interests, is all”.
No evidence for this take whatsoever; it’s just naked, gullible brand loyalty.
Kind of an amazing phenomenon, if it weren’t so sad.
I’ve got both. iOS for work, android for personal use. I’m in DevSecOps and therefore tend to see everything from this sort of mindset. Apple didn’t make a deal with them, they don’t have an open standard. It’s proprietary, it’s locked down. Why would any company with that sort of a product allow another company to interface with their offerings without paying for it? Even if it’s nice and secure, this will add load to the iMessage servers that people aren’t paying Apple for. It could introduce errors/issues they never tested for because they have a closed ecosystem and only have to test with their own devices, a known quantity. It could even increase potential attack vectors.
If you offered wifi to your friends via a guest network and then someone figured out how to connect their whole neighborhood to it, would you be fine with that?
Good points. But, and using your LAN comparison: if my wifi’s guest network used some custom method (let’s also consider it a proprietary method for the sake of comparison) to, A) impose an arbitrary limit of uploading files no larger than 100KB (and/or have the files heavily compressed to meet said limit) while B) offering no clear method of communication to the non-guest users why this limitation is occuring (or even exists)… I can imagine both guests and non-guests would quickly become irritated and start bickering among themselves as to whose fault this arbitrarily-imposed “local network file sharing problem” should be blamed on.
I don’t think it’s the guests fault for being arbitrarily limited. And I wish the non-guests could be told why the limitations are imposed.
Because no one behind a trillion dollar company should (in good faith, at least) concern themselves with restricting non-Apple, shareable files to be seen as “just slightly, technically accessible to Apple devices”.
These constraints are clearly imposed on Apple users (by no one but Apple) to alienate “non-privileged, non-Apple customers” (them) from the “privileged Apple customers” (us).
And Apple’s goal on “finding common ground” seems to be: do not negotiate with any proposed solutions as the division we are creating is intentional.
What’s the choice? Apple isn’t going to license it for all the tea in China.
It’s entirely different in that it was not a vulnerability or exploit of any kind and actually improved the security of Apple’s users.
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Why should our government care about this? I’ve been on android for over a decade now, I have 0 interest in this imessage bullshit and I don’t understand why our government representatives care
What benefits are there to expanding this system? Why should they waste resources spending time on this?
Also this community would rather just downvote than actually have a discussion. Engage with me instead of downvoting me this time, stop downvoting things you disagree with, this isn’t reddit. I’m contributing to the conversation and you have an opportunity to explain the reasons behind this
Edit: thank you to all the people who took the time to answer my question
To make the phone and messaging market more competitive. It may not affect you but it does affect most android users.
Also maybe she has an android, idk
Messaging interoperability between the two major mobile platforms greatly affects communication for those of us who have friends and family on the other platform. Cross-platform messaging allows us to communicate no matter which platform the friend or family member happened to buy. Blocking this feature is anti-competitive and detrimental to communication.
The entire purpose of government is to help make society better for all of its members. Some government representatives may decide that ‘better for society’ would be to allow the corporation to maximize profit even if it harms the consumer. This particular politician believes that society would benefit from this interoperability and that the company may be overstepping anti-competitive monopoly boundaries by blocking it.
Whether you agree with the idea or not, and whether it affects you personally or not is immaterial. It affects society at large and the government is supposed to represent members of its society.
It’s nice that you either don’t use SMS or all of your family/friends are on Android, or you simply don’t have family/friends, but for the rest of us, we would like to send pictures to our grandma without her complaining that it’s pixelated and tiny because she has an iPhone. It has been frustrating for years, but now that a solution has been realized, it seems anti-competitive that one of the vendors is now trying to block the fix. Regardless, even if this fix remains blocked, we do have hope that iOS will get RCS in the near future.
Signal is great. E2ee multiplatform messaging. Everybody’s happy.
I love third party messaging apps. It’s quite a bit more difficult to get every single extended family member on board. 2nd cousin I see at a family reunion every year or two? “Hit me up some time! Just install this app on your phone first and sign up for an account!”
I’ll get on board with this one if all phone manufacturers start installing signal as their default messaging app.
It’s not a messaging thing it’s an anti-trust thing. And for all the times I agree with Warren, I think she’s wrong here.
Instead they should force any phone manufacturer to integrate matrix in the SMS app, that would really benefit the user most…
Apple is a private company what business does the gov have here?
Same reason the EU forced apple to change to usb-c. It benefits consumers.
Apple is already adopting RCS. There’s no benefit here other than to spammers looking for a backdoor into iMessage.
You seem confident about “no benefit here”. Are you sure about that or is that the flavor of the boot polish that you are tasting?
Also, “backdoor into iMessage”, wtf?
Proprietary, closed source, third-party software that hasn’t been audited by a third party, that’s hooking into another proprietary protocol without the owner of said protocol’s approval.
Sounds to me like Apple fixed a security vulnerability they were exploiting to gain access to the platform. Honestly it reminds me of Microsoft and AOL with the AIM and MSN Messenger wars. I believe AIM used a buffer overflow on purpose for authentication, despite it being a serious security vulnerability.
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Of course Apple doesn’t want others to access the iMessage protocol. It’s part of their walled garden. They can claim it’s a secure protocol because they have full control over it. An application like Beeper gaining access undermines this.
Beeper doesn’t access some sort of global repository of messages, but we’ve no idea what Beeper does with the conversations that are had via their clients. With iMessages you trust Apple, feel about that how you will, with Beeper you trust whoever is in charge of that.
Beeper is never going to last anyway. If they manage to regain access to iMessages, Apple will just update the protocol to reject them again. With Apple implementing RCS there’s not really any point in applying legal pressure on Apple to open up their platform either.
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They can claim it’s a secure protocol because they have full control over it. An application like Beeper gaining access undermines this.
Claiming their protocol is “security by obscurity” would not be the win for them you think it is.
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All of this has already played out before, some ~20 years ago. Microsoft wanted MSN Messenger to be compatible with AOL’s Instant Messenger, so they reverse-engineered the protocol, only for AOL to update it, breaking the compatibility. It went back and forth until Microsoft revealed that AOL was using a buffer overrun exploit in their client to do remote code injection in order to authenticate the client.
Apple will never allow Beeper to exist; there’s no point investing any time or money into it as whenever they manage to sneak back in, Apple will boot them back out. Perhaps some sort of legislation will fall in place forcing Apple’s platform open, but given that they’re implementing RCS I somehow doubt it.
Further, we know nothing about Beeper as a platform. It can/could speak with iMessages, but then what? How do we know it’s secure? Because the owner of the product says so?
If the idea is to get secure and encrypted messaging between an iOS and an Android user, why not go for something like Signal that’s open source?
The US is not a libertarian society. Private businesses play within the guardrails set by the people and their elected representatives.
Ever heard of anti-trust?
Sovereignty over territory Apple chose to conduct business in.
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Large bodies of people (Congress) cam do multiple things at once. Chill your biscuits
Edit: thongs -> things
That typo 🤝 Your username
One track mind
Cranking it to warren? No judge.
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Yeah, how can they discuss two (2!) subjects at the same time over there??? I don’t even have strong opinions one way or the other but had to call out your lazy whataboutism.
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I was being sarcastic. We all have issues we care about, and one of the dumbest things you could do with that is screaming that someone is not giving it the right amount of attention. It’s dumb, because you can always kill conversation with it, so anyone using that conversation tactic only uses it for that purpose, or because they are dumb.
“Oh you like eating normal food!?!? Don’t you know some folk in poor countries have no food at all!?!?.” -Someone just like you, commenting on a How To video about cooking Chicken Handi.
I was making fun of you, because your comment was dumb.
Oh she’s in a blue bubble alright
(Couldn’t resist this joke, I don’t give a shit really)
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