Apple today in a statement confirmed that it undertook action to stop Beeper Mini from working, a controversial new app that acted as an iMessage client for Android (via 9to5Mac).
Beeper Mini is a new app from Beeper that represents the latest effort from the Android community to create workarounds that allow iMessage to work, even in limited capacity, on non-Apple devices. The app launched on Tuesday, December 5, but just 24 hours later, it could no longer connect to iMessage. It was strongly suspected that Apple was behind the sudden outage of Beeper Mini as the company sought to shut it down quickly.
Earlier today, Apple issued a statement to 9to5Mac confirming that it made certain changes to iMessage’s backend to block unauthorized access to its messaging service as a direct response to Beeper Mini.
At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and security technologies designed to give users control of their data and keep personal information safe. We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage. These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users.
Apple statement to 9to5Mac
Beeper posted a response to Apple through its account on X, stating that its approach does not compromise the security and privacy of iMessage texts sent through its apps.
Beeper Mini is not the Beeper’s first attempt to provide an iMessage client on Android. Their first app, Beeper Cloud, provided iMessage access in addition to other services like WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Slack, and more. While Beeper Mini remains down, Beeper Cloud is now back up and able to connect to iMessage. The company also confirmed it is working to restore Beeper Mini.
Beeper Mini originally worked by reverse engineering Apple’s iMessage protocol, which means it can send messages directly to Apple’s servers. This allows Android users to send messages that appear as blue bubbles in iMessage chats, just like they would if they were sent from an iPhone.
According to testers, iMessage texts sent from an Android phone to iPhones appeared as blue bubbles and were working fine with group chats, photos, or videos. The only downside is that Beeper Mini doesn’t support SMS or RCS, so you’ll need to use a separate app for those messages.
It’s important to note that Beeper Mini isn’t the first app to try to bring iMessage to Android. Two other apps, Sunbird and Nothing’s Nothing Chats, attempted to do the same thing, but both were similarly shut down due to security concerns.
Sunbird and Nothing Chats worked by relaying messages through a Mac hosted in the cloud. This posed a security risk because it meant that a third-party company had access to users’ messages. In the case of Nothing Chats, security researchers discovered serious vulnerabilities that could have allowed attackers to intercept and read messages.
Beeper Mini aimed to avoid these security problems by sending messages directly to Apple’s servers. This allegedly meant that Beeper doesn’t have access to users’ messages, messages are encrypted both in transit and at rest, and it doesn’t need to access your Apple account.
It remains to be seen if Beeper will be successful in its attempt to restore Beeper Mini in this cat-and-mouse game with Apple. In all cases, Android users won’t have to wait for long for a better texting experience with their iPhone peers as Apple confirmed plans to support RCS messaging on iOS sometime next year.
