XMPP Radar Newsletter #19: Privacy, Security and Encryption of Instant Messaging

ejabberd 17.01 Released!

We’re pleased to announce the first version of ejabberd for 2017. This new ejabberd 17.01 follows closely the previous release. It includes mostly bug fixes over all the previous refactors. ejabberd 17.01 is a rock-solid stable base for upcoming improvements. It will give you the best experience you ever had with ejabberd.

Encrypted Instant Messaging Recommendations for January 2017

Encrypt all your online (IM) communication, there is no good reason anymore to not doing it. Use a XMPP+Omemo client (Conversations on Android and ChatSecure on iOS) or a Matrix+Olm client (Riot).

Jackline: a Secure Terminal-based XMPP Client

The goal was from the beginning to write a “minimalistic graphical user interface for a secure (fail hard) and trustworthy XMPP client”. Fail hard means exactly that: if it can’t authenticate the server, don’t send the password. If there is no end-to-end encrypted session, don’t send the message.

XSender: The Source of All the Recent XMPP Spam

In recent months, security researchers, hackers, and other dwellers of the cyber-criminal underground have noticed an uptick in XMPP (formerly Jabber) spam. At the bottom of the vast majority of these messages is a service named XSender (XSNDR) that provides rentable XMPP spam slots for anyone looking to peddle legal or illegal products.

Configure ejabberd with Modern XMPP and TLS Features

Admins of schokokeks.org recently put some effort into enabling many modern XMPP and TLS features on their ejabberd server, for example making it fully compatible with Conversations client. Now they are sharing their config publicly!

DuckDuckGo Public XMPP Server

Did you know that DuckDuckGo, the decentralized non-tracking search engine, operates its own public XMPP server?

List of XMPP Servers on the Onion Network

Here’s a list of XMPP servers available as hidden services for use with the Prosody server and mod_onions.