Isn’t it funny that every tech commenter was like “Apple would have to re-engineer their whole iMessage stack if they want to cut off access to Beeper Mini”?
The thing with this service is, if I understand it correctly, that they were using someone else’s device ID to send messages.
So, say for example that someone started using my Mac Mini’s ID (my Mac being located in Madrid, Spain) to send iMessages in the US….
People expected Apple not noticing it?
It worked when it was some hacker’s project because at that time, a few stolen Apple device IDs didn’t raise too many red flags. But at a large scale, and used by a company, it may be easy for Apple to detect.
And don’t be fooled: the system worked by stealing someone else’s legitimate device ID, and pose as it to send messages to the system. So, this company could be making money by using you Apple device ID. I’m not ok with that.
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I was under the impression that interaction with Apple’s servers required some kind of “proof” (honor system really) that you’re using an Apple device, which used device ID that was spoofed; just like how Hackintosh had done for push notifications for years.
Worth noting that Hackintosh got to a point where someone wrote scripts to generate random strings to brute force until they encounter a valid device ID, so they’d literally assume someone else’s legitimate device to get push notifications.
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Thanks for digging into this and confirming my understanding!
On a quick glance, this looks to be more secure the the old Hackintosh push notification (where it was based solely on a single device ID/serial number), but rather, some kind of certificate based identity system. This makes it more secure because without access to Apple’s private signing keys, it should be very difficult to get a certificate signed by Apple to spoof the interaction. Though, I wonder how were the devices getting it in the first place, and if that part would be the next vector that’d need to be compromised (i.e.: if you get a signed certificate during device activation, then it’d be possible to swipe a signed certificate from a Mac you own; or that activation process itself becomes the next attack vector).
Having interacted very briefly with Eric Migicovsky a long time ago (due to Pebble), this does not surprise me that much. He’s a great guy, and appears to want to do the right thing to help everyone. Beeper wanted to do it in the cloud with Mac systems/VMs, which is a costly endeavour. This POC would allow the interaction to run natively without themselves essentially MITM’ing all users, so it would save their company a lot of money. POC was done allegedly by some high school kid, and given Eric’s Pebble fame, I think he’s just thrilled that they could save some money and help some kid get started.
In all cases, it is certainly interesting to see how this has been playing out, and I’d be curious to see how this continue to play out, because I doubt this will be the end of this story.
Beeper mini still needed a device serial for it to register with apple’s serial which makes it easy for Apple to see a swath of fake device serials being registered.
That would seem to imply that tech commenters know less than Apple about Apple’s own servers. Shocking.
My bet is that is if Apple comments at all, they will talk about closing a security vulnerability rather than cutting off android users.
You would have be dumb enough to buy apple products to believe that.
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Why would Apple have to reverse engineer their own protocol?
Re- not reverse-engineer.
D’oh. Shouldn’t have commented before getting out of bed.
With pypush the error seems to come when generating validaiton data (it either gets stuck endlessly or shows a error saying no cert found). Pypush is still able to communicate with apples sms gateway (and the gateway still sends sms replies). Additionally 2fa codes are still triggered and sent.
The weirdest part is even if you import your own real mac serial (data.plist) the same issue arises (I tried with my personal 2011 mac mini).
I wonder if the issue specifically relates to pypush trying to spoof a m1 mac using a intel mac serial, or the uncanny vally of registering a phone number through a mac serial.
This is the second service in as many weeks to be shut down offering this service, right?
Yep; different circumstances though.
Beeper Mini was shut down by Apple, which allegedly identified the requests from Beeper Mini and terminated access to its servers.
Nothing Chat/Sunbird, on the other hand, was shut down from themselves, because they were caught mishandling user information. The method itself was not shut down, rather they discontinued their own implementation. (Fwiw, Beeper has a similar implementation on another product of theirs, which remains functional as far as I know. )
It’s down as well.
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Good. Beeper Mini was a gross hack based on an edge case trick that they shouldn’t have been charging for.
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It wasn’t really a hack though so much as it manipulated the way it identifies itself to Apples servers. Apple obviously changed something there in retaliation so it’s not working now, but depending on the severity of the change they could get around this.
Honestly though it won’t last long. Eric has a history of being overly ambitious and it’s why Pebble failed.
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