Sunbirdwhich aims to bring iMessage to Android users, halted development and pulled its app from the Play Store amid security concerns raised this week.
Earlier this week, the company sent a notification to its users, as noted by 9to5Google first, saying it’s halting development of the app to investigate security issues.
“We have temporarily shut down the Sunbird app while we conduct a thorough security analysis. We will get back to the community once we know the exact incidents and our plan to mitigate them going forward,” the company said on its Discord on November 19.
Multiple users on the Sunbird subreddit noted that they had received notice from the company about shutting down the app.
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“We are working around the clock on the app to address the concerns raised and improve the experience. Navigating the press and the obligations of our partners did not allow us to send a message earlier. Much is still going on and we are committed to Sunbird’s success,” the company said on its Discord on Tuesday in an update.
Sunbird messaging was founded in 2021 and has received a total funding of $2.9 million according to Crunchbase data. The company launched its app in a closed program last December.
The app came to the fore when Nothing — a company started by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei — announced earlier this month that it was using Sunbird’s technology to bring iMessage to Android via No chats.
However, following the announcement, many researchers pointed out security flaws within the app, including messages sent in plain text, as pointed out in a blog post from Texts.com.
Other security researchers, including researcher Dylan Roussel, also pointed out that all messages and media sent through Nothing Chats and Sunbird are public.
In response to these claims, Nothing pulled the Nothing Chats beta from the Play Store and said it would work with Sunbird to “fix several bugs.”
Given the blue bubble/green bubble split, many message collection apps have tried to solve this problem. The aforementioned Texts.com, which was acquired by WordPress.com owner Automattic last month for $50 million, offers iMessage on Mac and SMS with iMessage. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky’s Beeper also offers iMessage integration in some capacity. However, there have been questions about privacy and security implications from these solutions.
All of these developments come amid news from Apple last week that the company will adopt RCS (Rich Communication Standards) – an overarching alternative to SMS that allows multimedia messaging with other features – next year. While this may not solve the green and blue bubble divide, Android users will be able to send high-resolution photos and videos to their friends and family using iPhones.
