Android phone maker Nothing made waves last week when it announced that its Nothing Chats app would allow Android users to become “blue bubbles,” logging into an Apple ID and sending iMessages between iPhones. The app was powered by Sundbird Messaging, an app, and service that has been in a closed waitlist beta for almost a year.
Immediately upon launching the Nothing Chats beta, researchers and journalists discovered that it failed just about every security promise Sunbird makes. Messages in plain text, media stored on Google Firebase servers, accessible vcards with contact info, you name it. Nothing Chats was pulled from the Play Store within a day. And now Sunbird, the app/service upon which it was built, has halted operations.
According to 9to5Google, Sunbird users are now greeted with a notification that the app is being temporarily shut down:
Dear Sunbird User. We have decided to pause Sunbird usage for now while we investigate security concerns. We will update you when we are ready to proceed.
Will Sunbird (and therefore Nothing Chats) ever start back up again? That remains to be seen. Most of the iMessage features it enables will be enabled next year when Apple finally brings RCS to iPhones. The security lapses found in Sunbird were severe enough that the company surely can’t just pinky-swear they’ve fixed everything—you would expect them to publish an independent third-party security audit before resuming operations. And the fact that the service never became broadly available since it was announced last December is somewhat problematic.
The time and expense necessary to truly alleviate Sunbird’s security problems in a way that will satisfy the public may no longer seem worthwhile with RCS on the horizon for the iPhone. Yes, the bubbles will still be green, but you’ll at least get read receipts, full-res media, typing indicators, and more. It is unclear what the future holds for the Sunbird service or Nothing Chats, but this serves as a good reminder to be very cautious with any app or service that promises to enable iMessage on Android.
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