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Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS
(www.androidcentral.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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They use a Mac mini somewhere to route these messages. So you're logging into that Mac mini with your iCloud credentials. Sounds like a privacy/security nightmare and creepy as fuck.
It seems like all efforts to "bridge" imessage to anything outside apple software work this way - there's a Matrix bridge and a dedicated open source app and they both rely on the imessage client on a mac. Is there a legitimate reason for it not being reverse-engineered yet?
The actual protocol isn't a secret. It's that the authentication of the device relies on a hardware key, and that key is fully locked down by Apple (as it also secures the user's biometric logins, keyring, financial information in Apple Wallet, etc.).
If it relies on a hardware key then why is it that I can get the same setup working with a macos virtual machine?
Using [BlueBubbles] (https://bluebubbles.app/) for anyone wondering.
I use beeper (a version of these apps that is actually released but kinda shit) and it's perfectly fine. Their solution would be better because it runs locally on the phone, however it's only on supported phones which is most likely just nothing phones.
More likely just a Linux VM
iMessage only runs on Apple products
...or a virtualized Apple product on a Linux machine. iMessage doesn't know the difference.