Apple's iconic blue and green-bubbled messaging platform has once again captured attention this week, albeit indirectly, as two significant news stories emerged, both of which tangentially affect iMessage. It's quite the sleight of hand.
To begin, WhatsApp stirred up the media frenzy surrounding its upcoming third-party chats by cautioning that it cannot guarantee its full security promise will extend to this new hub feature. Without control over the clients or endpoints on each side of a chat, WhatsApp expressed uncertainty regarding the complete security of content shared through this channel.
How does this impact iMessage
? Well, iMessage has the same ruthless focus on security as WhatsApp—just look at its post-quantum crypto update last month. But if WhatsApp cannot assure messages outside its walled garden where transmission is end-to-end encrypted if not the endpoints, then it’s a stark reminder as to just how insecure iMessage is once users message outside the Apple bubble, because here not even transmission is fully encrypted, never mind those endpoints.
There was a fix for this late last year, kind of. Beeper Mini—remember that—turned up to fudge a bridge between iMessage and Android, suddenly end-to-end encrypted blue bubbles appeared on Samsungs. But Apple shut it down for lots of Apple-like reasons and it was soon no more.