Regarding the situation where the third-party service Beeper Mini exploited a system vulnerability to allow Android devices to send Apple iMessage message content, Apple earlier confirmed that it has patched the relevant vulnerability, which means that the Beeper Mini service will no longer be able to be used smoothly.
Currently, sending iMessage messages through Beeper Mini will result in an error message. Beeper Mini developer Beeper said it will evaluate other methods to allow the Beeper Mini service to continue operating.
Investigating reports that sending/receiving is not working in Beeper Mini 🔎
— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 8, 2023
As for Apple's statement, it said that in order to protect user privacy and security, it has now blocked the practice of accessing the iMessage server through fake authentication information to prevent potential information leakage and subsequent spam or phishing attacks.
In Beeper Mini's operating mode, it mainly disguises itself as an iOS device through its service, thereby accessing the iMessage service for verification, and then obtaining messages from the user, and then forwarding the messages to the user's Android phone, or passing the messages from the Android phone to the iOS device.
Although Beeper emphasized that its technology is fully encrypted and only users can see the content of their messages, its service operation model could not allow Apple to successfully verify its security, so it was ultimately considered to pose a potential risk and its service operation model was eventually blocked.
And AppleIt is expected to support RCS messaging system in 2024, potentially becoming a complete SMS bridge between Android and iOS devices. However, Apple stated that even if RCS SMS support is added in the future, messages sent through iMessage will still appear as blue bubbles, while RCS SMS messages implemented on the Android platform will continue to appear as green bubbles. This may still cause a sense of disconnection for some users.
