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iMessage for Android
- dariusm5 13y agoI'm afraid to install this. Does it actually work or is it another common fake app found on the Play store?
- robbiet480 13y agoIt's working for me. Sending and receiving messages and pictures. Receiving them faster then Messages for Mac is even!
- esusatyo 13y agoDoes it actually register as an iMessage? I wonder how they pulled it off.
- NamTaf 13y agoIs this actually running on Apple's iMessage protocol or is it just duplicating/imitating it? That is to say, if you 'iMessage' to an Apple device, does it come up as an iMessage on that device?
- robbiet480 13y agoIt did when I tried with my roommate. He even sent me a picture.
- Moto7451 13y agoI signed up on my phone and was notified by my iPad that another device had been added to my account. Seems to be a working implementation.
- consultutah 13y agoSadly this will probably be shut down by morning since it didn't come from Apple. What Apple should, but won't do, is buy it and release it for free themselves. But then Apple would have to admit that there just might be another AppStore in the universe and their reality distortion field might show a small dent.
- esusatyo 13y agoRemember this is Play Store not App Store. Apple can not pull anything out of the Play Store. What they can do is to shut off the backend because they probably don't have rights to use it anyway.
- tomflack 13y agoThey don't need to pull anything, just have their lawyers tell Google's lawyers that their iMessage trademark is being infringed. Gone.
- 37prime 13y agoBruce Sewell’s office can always send a letter to Google Play Store. Most likely Google Play store would comply.
- est 13y agoYou can pull it off for Trademark infringement
- dan1234 13y agoWhy would Apple buy them? If they wanted to release iMessage for Android, they would. But it's a selling point for them, so it's not likely to happen.
- jasonlotito 13y agoDoes this screw up the ordering of messages just like iMessages? Does it make you apart of the same conversation multiple times, so that when you send a message, you get your own reply?
- aaronpk 13y agoThis is going to get shut down so fast from Apple, which is kind of sad given the amount of work that must have gone into this!
- msoad 13y agoNot necessarily. There is many Airplay apps that are working for ages. Maybe they have to rename their app.
- nwh 13y agoAirplay stuff never talked to Apple's servers though, this does.
- mmcconnell1618 13y agoIf Apple wants it gone they have a legal staff that can make life hell for the app author. My guess is the 'iMessage' name and icon design are enough for a takedown order.
- os2baba 13y agoIn China? Good luck with that.
- josho 13y agoI understand that with the latest Apple TV update Airplay is now proprietary. Ie. wrapped in Apple's FairPlay DRM spec. So, any third party non-licensed Airplay services are now dead. With the US' draconian DMCA law in place, it also now illegal to build any devices that Apple hasn't licensed to use Airplay on your Apple TV.
- irunbackwards 13y agoI think it just got shut down.
- 37prime 13y agoSounds great, but I’m still worried because this App might hijack the Apple ID and password. If I remember it correctly, Apple does not publish their Apple ID API outside of iOS SDK.
- bengotow 13y agoI absolutely agree. This is really impressive if it works, but there's no way I'm giving this my Apple ID.
- pdenya 13y agoNot sure if you're wanting this because you're switching devices but for full time android users it shouldn't be a big deal to set up a new apple id to use this app.
- kennywinker 13y agoThey don't even publish the Apple ID API inside the iOS SDK. There is no way to directly use Apple ID as a form of identification. Only 2nd-hand ways, like GameCenter, and iCloud.
- 37prime 13y agoThat's what I meant, through Game Center and iCloud.
- jjcall 13y agoI would love to know how they pulled this off.
- plantain 13y agoPresumably it's Java. Disassembly is quite easy and can even produce quite readable source.
- moinnadeem 13y agoObfuscated code, auto-downloads APKs, presumably to 'self update' but no one is sure. Use it with a demo account.
- zarify 13y agoRegardless of whether it'll disappear from the Play store quickly or not this is kinda cool. Hopefully it means there'll be a FOSS implementation of this at some point and we can get other Linuxy stuff talking to iDevices. (If there already is one I'd love to be pointed at it, I've done some searching previously trying to get a nice solution for getting scripts at home communicating with me - I eventually settled on using push notifications with Prowl http://www.prowlapp.com/ http://www.prowlapp.com/)
- dcope 13y agoThis is actually talking directly to the iMessage service. It's hitting https://service.ess.apple.com:443 https://service.ess.apple.com:443 (and https://service2.ess.apple.com:443 https://service2.ess.apple.com:443 when authenticating) and not being proxied through any third-party servers. That being said, it does look like the app reports basic analytics but nothing sensitive. This is truly impressive!
- axxl 13y agoIndeed! I wonder if Apple will be able to patch this app out while retaining access for their own devices.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoThey can start by getting Google and other major app stores to pull the app for copyright / trademark infringement on the term "iMessage", then they can sue the developer for the same (he's public with his identity). Beyond that all they need to do is include some form of digital signing in the login process which he can't duplicate and jobs a good un. Alternatively they may say that they don't care and leave it alone as it strengthens iMessage as a platform. But my guess is that this won't end well. Isn't it trademarks that you have to defend or you lose them? If that's the case then Apple at the very least need to have him change the name and so on.
- unknownian 13y agoIt would definitely seem less shady if the dev didn't copy iOS UI and icons. Still I downloaded it and hope to test it.
- Sektor 13y agoAnyone manage to sign into the app? I just get 'Password or Apple ID error' with a Chinese 'OK' button
- Sektor 13y agothe app only supports passwords up to 16 characters in length and mine was ... a lot longer.
- ttflee 13y agoIs 16 characters exactly the length of a whole block of AES 128 input?
- roryhughes 13y agoHaving the same problem here...
- nl 13y agoFunny how a small app like that can destroy all the hopes a multi-billion dollar company like Blackberry put in their stay relevant by rolling out BB Messenger to iOS and Android plan. Assuming Apple doesn't kill it of course... There are some good reasons why Apple shouldn't kill it (network effect work both ways) but who knows what they will do.
- WildUtah 13y agoApple can just pull this off Google Play and then also reject BB Messenger from iTunes App Store. Boom. Victory through lawyering with no technical work whatsoever. Two competitors down.
- matthew-wegner 13y agoAs a hackintosh user, I hope the blast radius on Apple's response doesn't kill iMessage here too...
- tuananh 13y agoI don't dare to try an app like this! Good work on reverse engineering the protocol though.
- anologwintermut 13y agoDoes this mean someone actually RE'd the entire iMessage cryptographic protocol. I know of several people who have wanted to analyze it. If so, if they or someone could put up the source or even a protocol spec, that would be amazing.
- w1ntermute 13y agoI'm sure someone will download the APK and decompile it. Hopefully the source hasn't been obfuscated.
- moinnadeem 13y agoIt has: https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/382365917361209344 https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/38236591736120934...
- mdp 13y agoIt looks a bit obfuscated, but there might be some useful finds. I'm going through it and looking for hardcoded strings that might not be in the resource files. I posted the APKTool output on Github for anyone that wants a quick look - https://github.com/mdp/iMessageChatDecompile https://github.com/mdp/iMessageChatDecompile
- vikas0380 13y agoif someone can reverse-engineered the protocol,then it is not very much difficult to reverse-engineered the obfuscated apk.
- Fistandantilus 13y agoUnfortunately, it seems to have been.
- yapcguy 13y agoKudos to the folk who reverse-engineered it, but I'm not sure this is a good thing in the long run. Put it this way, just like AirPlay and AirDrop, it keeps the open-source community on the backfoot, always looking to "keep up with the Joneses" when in fact we should let these proprietary protocols wither and die. The public perception shouldn't be that Apple lead and others follow, it should be that Apple have deliberately isolated themselves from everybody else.
- habosa 13y agoThis is really awesome. They should release the method, although obviously there is some value in their not doing so. I'm sure Apple will change the iMessage endpoint to kill this, but that's a cat-and-mouse game they'll lose with the dev community in the long run. If this is a true reverse engineering of the iMessage protocol, this will be very hard to shut down.
- supadupafly 13y agoIt is such a shame and pity that it comes from China. It killed all of the buzz for me in an instant. I have nothing against Chinese people, but an app that has done something never done before with Chinglish in it - nope.
- chid 13y agoThose can be easily fixed with a translator.
- darth_static 13y agoIt's not the use of the characters per se, it's the fact that this app came from a country with a history of state-sponsored hacking and censorship.
- dz0ny 13y agoAnd USA isn't?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- chenster 13y agoHeard of NSA? You bias stereotype peeps.
- supadupafly 13y agoOh god... Where do you hide a tree? In the woods. Everybody is talking about high level conspiracies regarding NSA, overseas intelligence agencies and whatsoever. But the real concern should be about simply getting scammed! Of course our(end user) data is not safe, it was not designed from the very start to be so. I have no problem with NSA and Apple reading my messages because I am sure that they won't use the credit card linked to my account without my consent. This... thing is a bit different. It is run by a third party provider somewhere outside of European and American jurisdictions. My concern is that if this app was created by Europeans or Americans, I would trust it my password and account, because I would have a tiny fraction of luck in case my account gets compromised and I loose money. There would be a possibility of an investigation, a court and a punishment. This, my friends, is a bit different scenario. If people get their accounts compromised and money gets stolen, Apple is not going to do a thing about it for two simple reasons: 1) Who wants to argue with China? What is the chance of even finding the physical location of the server all the data gets relayed back to? 2) Apple never authorised the use of third party apps. This is my concern about China, nothing else. I would love to use this app for my every day needs, I would even pay for it! But the chance of my account being stolen with no possible outcome positive for me just rustles my jimmies.
- mmvvaa 13y agoLooks like someone inside the Blackberry deal, trying to demonstrate how irrelevant BBM is.
- saurik 13y agoI believe that this application actually does connect to Apple's servers from the phone, but it doesn't then interpret the protocol on the device. Instead, it ferries the data to the third-party developer's server, parses everything remotely, figures out what to do with the data, and sends everything back to the client decoded along with responses to send back to Apple. Doing it this way means that Apple can't just block them by IP address, it avoids them having to distribute their "secret sauce" (understanding the iMessage protocol is clearly very valuable), and it potentially allows them to use actual Apple code on their servers (in case they haven't spent the time to fully break the fairplay obfuscation that Apple is using for some of their keys). Here's what I'm seeing: every time I send it a message, I get a packet from Apple, and then immediately the app sends a packet of almost exactly the same size to 222.77.191.206 (which is listed in this application's APK as "ServerIp"). It then gets back two packets from the Chinese server, the first of which I'm presuming is the decoded result and the second packet being a response to send Apple (as immediately a packet is sent back to Apple with about the same size). Additionally, if you read the reviews of this application, the author is making some very weird responses to people with login issues: he's asking for their Apple ID, as apparently that's enough for him to debug their issue. That shouldn't be possible if the application is just directly talking to Apple the entire time. [edit: The more I stare at this, the more confident I am in this analysis; specifically, the packets that are "about" and "almost exactly" the same size are very deterministic: the packets to/from Apple are precisely 7 bytes larger than the corresponding packets to/from the Chinese server.] [edit: It also occurred to me to verify the other direction: in fact, if you go to send a message, first the client sends something to the developer's server, which then returns a packet which, along with again the exactly 7 extra bytes, is sent to Apple's server.]
- nwh 13y agoThat makes sense with my very limited experience messing with the iMessage protocol. Stands to reason that passwords are being ferried back to them though, there's got to be some financial reason for going to all this trouble. ED: Their obfuscation isn't actually that severe once you get used to it.
- philwelch 13y agoNot that this needs pointing out, but this also means the mysterious Chinese server also gets to read all your iMessages. This is some kind of quasi-MITM, and for that alone Apple would be in the right to block this kind of thing from ever working.
- ddon 13y agojust tested it with my account, and it works! even sending and receiving images works... very impressive :) let's see how long will it work :)
- riobard 13y agoThis explained all the iMessage spam…
- jthomp 13y agoCan confirm that it works here.
- Xelom 13y agoFirst screenshot. Cancle.
- munimkazia 13y agoThis is blowing up all over the internet right now.. It is pretty amazing that there is an app like this which works, but it is even more surprising that this has been around for a bit, and it flew relatively under the radar. I just tried it out myself, and my boss who uses an iPhone is in total shock.
- l33tfr4gg3r 13y agoOne less reason to buy an iDevice, at least until Apple issues the inevitable takedown, Cease-and-Desist, iSueYou, etc.
- dubrocks 13y agoInsane. They even have a way to create an Apple ID in the app!
- ozh 13y agoI'm on Android and I think the last thing I want to install is an iSomething.
- antirez 13y agoThis remembers me how an interoperability fiasco iMessage is. Just for the interoperability issue many iOS users are slowly switching to Whatsapp: you start using it to message your Android buddies at first, then eventually you want to just use a single app... the limiting factor for iMessage to be dismissed completely by some user is the fact that there is no way to message iPad users from Whatsapp, something they should fix IMHO.
- DAddYE 13y agoWhatsapp is even worse, AFAIK the protocol is still a jabbered one but closed source. I write/read my messages mostly from my mac (usually where I'm most of the day -.-) so I'm still using iMessage to chat with the 99% of my friends which owns an iphone/ipad. Indeed I see what you mean and I agree with you.
- antirez 13y agoSecurity-wise, yes, Whatsapp is terrible, but as a product, is a pretty impressive success. The lack of a desktop client is indeed an issue, I switched to Android recently and when I need to do plain SMS messaging there is AirDroid for that, but for Whatsapp no good solutions so far.
- DrJokepu 13y agoI think a better way to think of iMessage something that seamlessly replaces text messages when some conditions are met. I mean, you can still text your Android user friends, can't you?
- so898 13y agoSo, the magic of some Chinese companies which been used to send advertisement finally be public. Will there be more iMessage advertisements after this? Maybe it is time for Apple to change their iMessage protocol.
- NKCSS 13y agoI hope the protocol specs leak soon... would be nice to write a Windows Phone client that can do iMessage; kik messenger sucks and whatsapp is buggy :-/
- cupcake-unicorn 13y agoI'm not familiar enough with Apple products, iOS, iMessage, etc. to understand why this is such an impressive feat. Can someone fill me in on why this is so amazing? It's a closed protocol I guess, but if this guy could pull this together under the radar like this how hasn't it been done before?
- unistdh 13y agoAmazing because the iMessage protocol is surprisingly complicated and seemed to be almost unintelligible to anyone outside of Apple: http://imfreedom.org/wiki/IMessage http://imfreedom.org/wiki/IMessage
- mrmondo 13y agoNow all they have to do to get people to use it is create a QR code for it ;)
- asenna 13y agoHow has this been up for 10 days?
- jessedhillon 13y agoSomewhat unrelated -- SMS seriously needs to die. Any phone carrier call center employee can check your inbox, supposedly that's an audited procedure but having worked in a call center I would tell you that I'd believe that nobody's watching anything. Just like email, SMS is a poor protocol/medium that has been contorted to doing way more than anyone ever intended originally. But there is definitely a need for a commodity, cross-platform secure messaging protocol that can be implemented by anyone. It hardly seems like there's anyone incentivized to do that though -- why would Apple, for example, want to ferry traffic to/from non Apple phones. And why would they want to step aside and let someone else replace their seamless, secure-ish messaging experience with something else? None of the other messaging apps can achieve the level of integration with the rest of the phone that iMessage can. The mere facts that iMessage is a) so good (integrated so well into the OS by way of unfair advantage) and b) closed, are probably sufficient to make sure that there won't ever be a common, secure messaging platform. It couldn't penetrate far enough into the iOS user base even if every Android user installed it.
- josho 13y agoI agree. But, the carriers love charging for text messaging bundles, so I can't imagine them pushing for something else, unless its equally as bad like MMS. So we are left with this crappy state of fragmented and proprietary messaging systems. We even have standard messaging protocols (XMPP), so it is not a technical hurdle. Merely there is no business opportunity to commoditize messaging, so it hasn't happened.
- huluwateam 13y agohi everybody,i am android message developer.
- otterley 13y agoHi, thanks for joining! Some questions: 1) It appears that the iMessage responses received from Apple's servers are forwarded as-is to a remote server for decoding and decryption. Is this correct? If so, why isn't this process performed in the application itself? 2) Now that you've clearly reverse-engineered the iMessage protocol, will you be publishing it so that others can benefit from interoperability? If not, why not?
- NKCSS 13y agoAwesome work so far. I think I speak for everyone here when I say we can't wait to see if you publish the protocol specs; everyone's hands are itching :)
- Tepix 13y agoDo you think your app can be blocked by Apple? Why did you use Apple's graphics instead of your own? It will make it easier for Apple to have your app taken down.
- LogicX 13y agoHi there - I sent you an email a few days ago regarding lengthening the password field for login. Thanks for the prompt reply: I was now able to login. Good to see you on HN!
- moystard 13y agoEven though the technical achievement is really impressive, the iOS6 design just looks out of place. It simply does not look right, it's a shame that implementing an iOS service led them to implement an iOS design, I would rather prefer a well integrated Android experience.
- eonil 13y agoBefore of all, using of the trademark iMessage is enough to get lawsuit from Apple lawyers. Also, it's sure that they are intentionally copying Apple's copyrighted material.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoThis will surely be pulled very quickly. For a start it's using the name iMessage. Secondly this is a big selling point for iDevices. Apple gets no benefit from it being available on other platforms.
- lawnchair_larry 13y agoThe prejudice here is amazing. Has no one here ever made a free app? Has anyone heard of Linux? Is it possible that out of all the people in China, at least one talented developer just thought that this would be a fun project that they could contribute? I still don't recommend allowing your conversation to be MITM'd, but the assertions that China = steal your password and charge your CC are a bit crazy. Propaganda works I see!
- untog 13y agoNo. but the assertions that China = steal your password and charge your CC are a bit crazy. The assertion that sending the password for an account tied to your credit card to a completely unknown recipient is a bad idea... is not crazy in the least. And has nothing to do with it being in China.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoLinux wouldn't have quite the uptake it does today if it was Torvalds was the only coder and the source code was closed.
- hamdullahshah 13y agoNoooo, what if the Chinese server is hacked by someone.
- aufreak3 13y agoAt first, when I read the post's title, I thought Apple had created iMessage for Android and put it up on the Play store. Now, that would be a really big deal because that would mean that Apple finally gets that communication is between people and not one family of computers. The current Apple attitude to communication and sharing (like PhotoStream) is akin to a telco saying you can only call other users on their network, or Google saying you can only send and receive emails from other gmail users. Apple finally getting communication would be a really big deal. I saw, to my great disappointment, that the program was not Apple's.
- eugeneross 13y agoLook at them one star ratings.
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoFellow Americans, take your snakeskin boots off your redwood desk, adjust the brim of your stetson hat, and shift the piece of grass you are chewing to the other side of your mouth; what I'm about to say is important: Classifying and stereotyping (even in a passive-agressive sense) is a relic of the past you need to get over.
- buzzedword 13y agoHas anybody else here forgotten you're passing on your Apple ID and password here in cleartext? There's a lot of information you can grab with that, and let's just assume that this guy also puts an app out for IOS-- and buys it with your account. Seriously? Not to mention all the data that can be mined from your associated messages. And for argument's sake, since, again the passwords are in cleartext, let's just say that a small percentage of users also use the same email and password for their Facebook or their Gmail (or whatever else email they have) -- let's just brute force some bank accounts, send a forgot password request, then scour their facebook for the security question. Nightmare scenario, but considering you're passing some random guy in china all this information, not entirely infeasible.
- buzzedword 13y agoHas anybody else here forgotten you're passing on your Apple ID and password here in cleartext? There's a lot of information you can grab with that, and let's just assume that this guy also puts an app out for IOS-- and buys it with your account. Seriously? Not to mention all the data that can be mined from your associated messages. And for argument's sake, since, again the passwords are in cleartext, let's just say that a small percentage of users also use the same email and password for their Facebook or their Gmail (or whatever else email they have) -- let's just brute force some bank accounts, send a forgot password request, then scour their facebook for the security question. Nightmare scenario, but considering you're passing some random guy in china all this information, not entirely infeasible.
- zane03 13y agoThey're dev website is unavailable which makes me question the stability of this... HA
- plg 13y agoat what point does Apple deploy their lawyers
- ajays 13y agoHere's a tin-foil-hat needing random theory of the day: Apple gave keys (and protocol) to decode iMessages to PRC Government, in return for being allowed to sell iPhones in China. Somehow they leaked, and now someone in China is offering this service. (adjusts tin-foil lined colander on head)
- racl101 13y agoIn the words of Stu from The Hangover movies: "What the fuck is going on!!??"
- BigBalli 13y agoalready got pulled.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pocketstar 13y agocan someone post a mirror, looks like it has already been taken down.
- WaterSponge 13y agohttp://www.huluwa.org/imessage/download.html http://www.huluwa.org/imessage/download.html
- kapitalx 13y agoDirect link to the APK since it was taken down from play store: http://www.huluwa.org/imessage/download/platfrom/android/iMessage_1.2.3.apk http://www.huluwa.org/imessage/download/platfrom/android/iMe...
- sonier 13y agoAny idea why it was taken down?
- pouzy 13y agoHas Apple already striked ? "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]