iMessage for Android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.huluwa.imessage

by robbiet480 • 13 years ago

301 221 13 years ago

play.google.com

dariusm5• 13 years ago

I'm afraid to install this. Does it actually work or is it another common fake app found on the Play store?

robbiet4802• 13 years ago

It's working for me. Sending and receiving messages and pictures. Receiving them faster then Messages for Mac is even!

esusatyo2• 13 years ago

Does it actually register as an iMessage? I wonder how they pulled it off.

NamTaf• 13 years ago

Is 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?

robbiet4802• 13 years ago

It did when I tried with my roommate. He even sent me a picture.

Moto7451• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

Sadly 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.

esusatyo2• 13 years ago

Remember 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• 13 years ago

They don't need to pull anything, just have their lawyers tell Google's lawyers that their iMessage trademark is being infringed. Gone.

37prime3• 13 years ago

Bruce Sewell’s office can always send a letter to Google Play Store. Most likely Google Play store would comply.

est3• 13 years ago

You can pull it off for Trademark infringement

dan1234• 13 years ago

Why 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• 13 years ago

Does 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• 13 years ago

This 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• 13 years ago

Not necessarily. There is many Airplay apps that are working for ages. Maybe they have to rename their app.

nwh6• 13 years ago

Airplay stuff never talked to Apple's servers though, this does.

mmcconnell1618• 13 years ago

If 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.

josho2• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

I think it just got shut down.

37prime3• 13 years ago

Sounds 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• 13 years ago

I absolutely agree. This is really impressive if it works, but there's no way I'm giving this my Apple ID.

pdenya• 13 years ago

Not 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• 13 years ago

They 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.

37prime3• 13 years ago

That's what I meant, through Game Center and iCloud.

jjcall• 13 years ago

I would love to know how they pulled this off.

plantain• 13 years ago

Presumably it's Java. Disassembly is quite easy and can even produce quite readable source.

moinnadeem3• 13 years ago

Obfuscated code, auto-downloads APKs, presumably to 'self update' but no one is sure.

Use it with a demo account.

zarify• 13 years ago

Regardless 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/)

dcope• 13 years ago

This is actually talking directly to the iMessage service. It's hitting https://service.ess.apple.com:443 (and 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• 13 years ago

Indeed! I wonder if Apple will be able to patch this app out while retaining access for their own devices.

Tyrannosaurs3• 13 years ago

They 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.

nwh6• 13 years ago

That's crazy. The protocol for iMessage is so complicated that I gave up very quickly after getting IP banned many, many times, it's an incredibly sensitive service to things like this. At the time I just wanted to be able to check if an email address was iMessage-supported, but it required piles of signatures and other authorisation.

It will get banned on Apple's end so quickly, but not before it's used to send mountains of spam.

terhechte• 13 years ago

Haha, same here. Instead I wrote an app that uses the iMessage Mac client to insert a mail address into the to: field and check whether it supports iMessage. And then I use pixelbuffer data to figure out whether the mail address has the correct iMessage supported color in the ui. Works great, but is a bit slow.

moinnadeem3• 13 years ago

They seem into cloning many of Apple's services to the other side: http://www.huluwa.org/

(eg. iCloud for PC)

BeauGiles3• 13 years ago

iCloud isn't nearly as exciting as iMessage, with the majority of iCloud services just being WebDAV (bookmarks, etc), CardDAV, CalDAV, IMAP, etc.

ronnier• 13 years ago

I'm wondering if they have friends inside of Apple that can tell them the protocol... or even copy code.

saurik6• 13 years ago

That being said, it does look like the app reports basic analytics but nothing sensitive.

Are you referring to the seemingly-encrypted network connection over port 5332 to a server in China at IP address 222.77.191.206 that has traffic that precisely correlates to me sending and receiving messages using the application? [edit: Which happens to be the value of the resource ServerId in the APK?]

duaneb• 13 years ago

Try sending a picture--surely the size of the Chinese body would scale with the picture

BeauGiles3• 13 years ago

Submitted to Mobile-Sandbox; http://mobilesandbox.org/xml_report_static/?q=357339

Only connects to Apple itself, And

http://alog.umeng.com/app_logs http://alog.umeng.co/app_logs http://oc.umeng.com/check_config_update http://oc.umeng.co/check_config_update

Which is 'apparently' a chinese analytics provider.

saurik6• 13 years ago

That is just looking for embedded URLs: it totally fails to notice the IP address hardcoded into the APK (222.77.191.206) that seems to be used every time you send/receive a message.

frank_boyd2• 13 years ago

Reminder: iMessage's "encryption" is open to the NSA. (What's more, Apple partners with the NSA.) Not sure why you'd want to submit to the surveillance state.

anologwintermut3• 13 years ago

<sarcasm> Because if you connect to an iMessage client that also sends your packets to China, the MSS and the NSA get stuck trying to both look at your packets. We call it Two Stooges Syndrome. Your information is safe. No, it doesn't make you invincible </sarcasm>

hyperbovine• 13 years ago

And here you are, posting messages in plain text to a public forum...

unknownian• 13 years ago

It would definitely seem less shady if the dev didn't copy iOS UI and icons. Still I downloaded it and hope to test it.

Sektor2• 13 years ago

Anyone manage to sign into the app? I just get 'Password or Apple ID error' with a Chinese 'OK' button

Sektor2• 13 years ago

the app only supports passwords up to 16 characters in length and mine was ... a lot longer.

ttflee• 13 years ago

Is 16 characters exactly the length of a whole block of AES 128 input?

roryhughes• 13 years ago

Having the same problem here...

nl• 13 years ago

Funny 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.

WildUtah2• 13 years ago

Apple 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.

biafra• 13 years ago

How could Apple convince Google to pull this from the Play Store?

matthew-wegner• 13 years ago

As a hackintosh user, I hope the blast radius on Apple's response doesn't kill iMessage here too...

tuananh• 13 years ago

I don't dare to try an app like this!

Good work on reverse engineering the protocol though.

anologwintermut3• 13 years ago

Does 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• 13 years ago

I'm sure someone will download the APK and decompile it. Hopefully the source hasn't been obfuscated.

moinnadeem3• 13 years ago

It has: https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/38236591736120934...

mdp• 13 years ago

It 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

yapcguy• 13 years ago

Kudos 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.

anologwintermut3• 13 years ago

I agree with you. I also suspect Apple's iMessage system is not nearly as secure as they claim it is. So if someone can post the full crypto protocol, others will find bugs/ backdoors* in it and you will have one more reason not to trust closed source secure communication software.

* By backdoor, I mean the protocol isn't actually end to end secure in the way Apple claims(i.e. safe from NSLs) and Apple does actually have access to messages. Not that the protocol looks secure and they picked backdoored primitives or some secrete key escrow scheme, though they may have done the latee at least in other cases[0]

[0]http://www.nosuchcon.org/talks/D1_02_Alex_Ninjas_and_Harry_P...

habosa• 13 years ago

This 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.

supadupafly2• 13 years ago

It 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• 13 years ago

Those can be easily fixed with a translator.

darth_static• 13 years ago

It'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.

mmvvaa• 13 years ago

Looks like someone inside the Blackberry deal, trying to demonstrate how irrelevant BBM is.

saurik6• 13 years ago

I 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.]

nwh6• 13 years ago

That 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.

philwelch3• 13 years ago

Not 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.

levosmetalo2• 13 years ago

Why is it any worse than only Apple server reading all you messages? You trust one third party with proven track record of spying on its customers, but somehow you are upset that someone else also has access to you messages, thought that someone didn't (yet) do anything wrong with them.

If you are American, you don't have to fear from Chinese espionage, and US agencies already have your data. If you are European, it's more or less the same. If you are from China, well, at least you can prove that you are not doing anything behind the government back ;)

hbbio2• 13 years ago

If it were a proper "Silicon Valley kid" who did that, you would applause loudly. Does it happen to you that there are talented geeks and developers in China. For one: http://agentzh.org/

MFaroTusino2• 13 years ago

I came to the same conclusion as Saurik, (though didn't go as far as looking up the Server and seeing it was from China).

I had hoped that I could decompile it, get the special sauce, and make a client for Qt-based OSes and also Windows Phone. Looks like I won't make any progress today

nwh6• 13 years ago

You likely won't be able to do anything at all, as the client is fairly dumb. It just takes requests from Apple's server, encrypts with CTR AES and a static key, then fires them off to the Chinese server for actual processing. Unless you want to use their server in your own application, you're just as snookered as before; you still need the secret sauce.

DAddYE4• 13 years ago

I think you got exactly what they are doing. In fact if you see their "icloud sdk" looks also exactly what you mentioned.

https://github.com/huluwateam/icloud

[edit: maybe this is more simple to decrypt https://github.com/huluwateam/icloud/blob/master/DataSyncSDK...]

est3• 13 years ago

Ahhh good ol' github. Shows the author email and everything. Finally I can ask the author for his secret ingredients.

chacham15• 13 years ago

the code there makes no mention of the iMessage protocol. everything there can be done using other publicly avaiable API's such as the CalDAV/CardDAV api.

DAddYE4• 13 years ago

However since this protocol is really strong:

1) They are using a workaround like a vm running osx where a program add the requested account on Message.app and then send back the I/O.

2) Second solution they got from an insider the protocol description and decryption.

pudquick• 13 years ago

I would be surprised if #1 was the case. Given the amount of volume of traffic that this app will generate, the traffic for identifying a rapidly signing in Message.app will be pretty unique and easily blockable by Apple.

Additionally, I know that recent efforts in the hackintosh community had problems with Message.app because the latest protocols incorporate being able to access the serial number of your machine (or something along those lines). Apple goes through some extensive hoops verifying that access to OS X -only and iOS-only services really does come from their devices.

huluwateam2• 13 years ago

Current version need server,because Apple have same limits. but in new version , i will not use server. Thanks.

Tepix2• 13 years ago

Do you know if iMessages are encrypted to more than one key (i.e. not just with the recipient key)?

gugol• 13 years ago

How the f* did you made this if you can't even speak English decently? No offense.

ddon• 13 years ago

just 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• 13 years ago

This explained all the iMessage spam…

jthomp• 13 years ago

Can confirm that it works here.

Xelom• 13 years ago

First screenshot. Cancle.

munimkazia• 13 years ago

This 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.

dubrocks• 13 years ago

Insane. They even have a way to create an Apple ID in the app!

ozh• 13 years ago

I'm on Android and I think the last thing I want to install is an iSomething.

antirez5• 13 years ago

This 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.

DAddYE4• 13 years ago

Whatsapp 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.

antirez5• 13 years ago

Security-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• 13 years ago

I 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?

antirez5• 13 years ago

Inability to send rich media types make text messages basically broken with today's smartphones.

Ntrails• 13 years ago

In my opinion the way iMessage works natively on an iphone/pad is awesome[1]. You don't ever have to think about it. No separate apps, just one place for communication.

I wish there could be some commonly agreed standard that would include all of the smartphone OS and be implemented similarly.

[1] except when I forget to check 3g before sending a photo and get charged for an MMS :(

pilsetnieks• 13 years ago

There are such standards, they're called SMS and MMS, it's just unfortunate that some greedy bastards are charging through the nose for them, not unlike printer ink.

danbee• 13 years ago

Um, how is it an interoperability fiasco? If I message someone who doesn't have iMessage it just falls back to SMS.

ChikkaChiChi5• 13 years ago

Try being a user of iMessage then switching to another phone without disabling iMessage in advance. Any Apple user who messaged you through iMessage will continue to send messages to a dead iMessage account.

josteink3• 13 years ago

The most humorous thing I've seen about iMessage is how it's automatically opt in, with no opt-out should you lose your device or switch to a new (Android) phone.

Our head of IT switched from iPhone and got a new Android phone. Suddenly he found that none of this Apple-using friends were messaging him anymore.

Actually they were, but Apple re-routed their SMSes through iMessage to a dead Apple-account. Without telling anyone about it.

Until he discovered what happened (due to a very angry and ignored-feeling Apple-using wife), he just assumed SMS was broken on Android.

iMessage really shows Apple at its core: So utterly self-centered that it's unable to comprehend that it even needs a interoperability story with the rest of the world.

eitally• 13 years ago

In fairness (insofar as all three totally deserve the ill will), Google & Microsoft have done the same things with Hangouts & Skype, respectively.

mannkind• 13 years ago

You're kidding right? It's trivial to turn off iMessage; it's one toggle switch in the settings.

On top of that I've had friends switch away from iPhone to Android; iOS switched to using SMS not but a day later (and I know at least some of them didn't turn it off manually because their iPhone was broken).

ChikkaChiChi5• 13 years ago

Seconded. I had the exact same problem jumping between devices when iMessage first launched.

jrnichols• 13 years ago

Your comment history shows that you tend to lean towards Apple bashing comments, but I was curious about this one and tried it out myself. I was unable to reproduce this. Took girlfriend's SIM card from iPhone and put it back in her old Android phone. Sent a couple text messages. When it couldn't send it as an iMessage, it failed on my end and asked me to send it as a text message.

Worked just fine.

antirez5• 13 years ago

To opt-out I had to unregister my devices from my Apple Account, and at start this did not worked because I had an iMessage client in my MBA, even if it was configured to just receive iMessage targeting my email address. A Nightmare.

nwienert3• 13 years ago

Everyone refuting this is missing the point. No one, not even geeks would realize you have to specifically de-activate iMessage before you switch to any other phone.

This exact thing happened to me. I switched back to Android and after a week of not receiving messages from my friends and family it took me hours and quite a few calls (sadly) to both AT&T and Apple before it was figured out.

In fact at first Apple had denied that anything should be wrong, thus all the wasted time figuring this out. Left a really poor taste in my mouth from the whole experience.

theycallmemorty2• 13 years ago

I've heard a lot about Whatsapp and iMessage... Can someone explain why I would want to use either instead of text messaging? Is this basically just MSN/ICQ style messaging on your phone? Why would I need that when I can just use SMS?

saurik6• 13 years ago

SMS costs money and requires a phone. Some people cannot afford texting plans or might not have a cell phone at all (think a teenager). Even if you are capable of receiving SMS, they are destined for a single device: with these alternatives, you get the notification on all of your devices, including your computer (which has a real keyboard and is more convenient for longer conversations). The benefit of iMessage is then to solve these problems in a seamless fashion (assuming you buy Apple hardware, as that's how Apple makes all of their money: hardware): if someone with an iPhone sends a message to someone else with an iPhone, it just notices "oh, hey, this could have been an iMessage", and the result is cheaper and more convenient (as the message goes everywhere, not just to their phone); if the message cannot be sent via iMessage for any reason, it gracefully degrades to SMS.

pacofvf• 13 years ago

because it uses mobile internet (gprs, edge, 3G, HSDPA, LTE, etc.) , you can share photos, also you can have chat groups and more stuff, also it's linked to your phone number, instead of a device(BBM) or an email account(iMessage). In some countries that's 10x cheaper than SMS or MMS.

Camillo• 13 years ago

There's also no way to message Mac users from Whatsapp. When I'm at my computer, I don't want to have to use my phone to IM people.

anonymews• 13 years ago

Viber, an alternative to whatsapp, has a desktop client.

so898• 13 years ago

So, 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.

NKCSS2• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

I'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• 13 years ago

Amazing because the iMessage protocol is surprisingly complicated and seemed to be almost unintelligible to anyone outside of Apple:

http://imfreedom.org/wiki/IMessage

mrmondo• 13 years ago

Now all they have to do to get people to use it is create a QR code for it ;)

asenna• 13 years ago

How has this been up for 10 days?

jessedhillon• 13 years ago

Somewhat 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.

josho2• 13 years ago

I 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.

huluwateam2• 13 years ago

hi everybody,i am android message developer.

otterley• 13 years ago

Hi, 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?

NKCSS2• 13 years ago

Awesome 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 :)

Tepix2• 13 years ago

Do 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• 13 years ago

Hi 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• 13 years ago

Even 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• 13 years ago

Before 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.

l33tfr4gg3r• 13 years ago

One less reason to buy an iDevice, at least until Apple issues the inevitable takedown, Cease-and-Desist, iSueYou, etc.

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

This 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• 13 years ago

The 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!

untog3• 13 years ago

No.

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.

ChikkaChiChi5• 13 years ago

Linux wouldn't have quite the uptake it does today if it was Torvalds was the only coder and the source code was closed.

hamdullahshah• 13 years ago

Noooo, what if the Chinese server is hacked by someone.

aufreak3• 13 years ago

At 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• 13 years ago

Look at them one star ratings.

ChikkaChiChi5• 13 years ago

Fellow 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• 13 years ago

Has 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• 13 years ago

They're dev website is unavailable which makes me question the stability of this... HA

plg• 13 years ago

at what point does Apple deploy their lawyers

ajays• 13 years ago

Here'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)

BigBalli• 13 years ago

already got pulled.

pocketstar• 13 years ago

can someone post a mirror, looks like it has already been taken down.

WaterSponge• 13 years ago

http://www.huluwa.org/imessage/download.html

kapitalx• 13 years ago

Direct link to the APK since it was taken down from play store: http://www.huluwa.org/imessage/download/platfrom/android/iMe...

sonier• 13 years ago

Any idea why it was taken down?

pouzy• 13 years ago

Has Apple already striked ? "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."

iMessage for Android

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