Nothing Chat app Discontinued, Security Concerns Cited

Nothing and Sunbird's security concerns about the iMessage app for Android

That was probably a sentence with an X—namely nothing! Nothing CEO Carl Pei verbally challenged Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier and has now suffered a major setback with his recently announced "Nothing Chats" app. The application, based on the Sundbird app, was supposed to make it possible to send messages to iMessage users, which includes a blue chat bubble from a Nothing Phone (2) to an Apple iPhone.

The Sunbird app was first announced for Android at the end of 2022 and was previously only available as an alpha version to a very limited number of users. However, last weekend, over 630,000 allegedly end-to-end encrypted files were discovered that could be accessed without much difficulty. This was a blatant security problem of which Sunbird and Nothing informed users immediately with the following notifications and "paused" downloads. Nothing even removed the beta version of the "Nothing Chats" app from the Google Play Store.

Dear Sunbird users, We have decided to suspend the use of Sunbird for the time being while we investigate security concerns. We will inform you as soon as we are ready to proceed.

Good evening everyone. We are investigating the security issues that have arisen in the last 24 hours. Out of an abundance of caution and to protect your sensitive data, we are temporarily closing Sunbird Media. We will keep you updated. Thank you and we apologize for the inconvenience.

There has been no official statement from Sunbird so far. However, the has previously ignored public safety concerns and in some cases blocked users who had basic technical questions about the app. Nothing has only commented on X (formerly Twitter) to date as follows:

We have removed the beta version of Nothing Chats from the Play Store and will delay its launch until further notice to work with Sunbird on fixing several bugs. We apologize for the delay.

Apple & Android to achieve chat harmony in 2024

After recent Apple news that Cupertino has plans to integrate the RCS (Rich Communication Services) protocol into its iPhones by 2024, this basically looked like a wasted effort.

What do you think of this situation? Was it an obvious failure or will it succeed? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below and let's discuss.

Via: 9to5google Source: reddit