Password-less authentication with XMPP | Hacker News Reader

Password-less authentication with XMPP

blog.agayon.be

43 pointsgoffi11 comments

At first I found it a little awkward, but after trying it, I think it works very well (e.g. much better than email due to instant nature of XMPP). I just don't know how vulnerable this extension is to spam.

I really like this! Too bad XMPP didn't become more popular, and unfortunately it feels like it is slowly dying rather than getting more widespread. Like any other open protocol.

For some reason it didn't work the first time I tried, the website just waited forever even though I confirmed the token. The second try worked fine, using Pidgin, with manual confirmation.

I was wondering what this could be good for, but then I noticed that sharing my XMPP account password with some strange website would be a bad idea. Instead giving them session based access to my account could be acceptable.

I am curious what the author is planning to build on top of that.

You are only giving the site your JID (username) not password and it verifies that you control the JID so you really are jepz@example.com

Indeed, it should be comparable to authentication by token or link sent via email.

Great, does Empathy on GNOME support this?

Also Pigeon ?

Two quite big players in the open source world.

It seems to be a matter of them implementing XEP-0070.

It transparently uses messages if a messanger does not implement the XEP so anything supports it. Just without the fancy UI.

But Matrix, Matrix!

Everybody should be using Matrix.

Actually, I don't quite like Matrix and mostly just for one reason. While decentralized communication isn't easy nowadays, they drive the protocol split that parts the developer community. Now devs have to decide if they want to build a XMPP or a Matrix product. Before there was just one IM protocol that was a reasonable solution for that kind of problem.

Yes, XMPP didn't have all the extension required to build cool mobile/web apps back in 2012. But instead of pushing XMPP they decided to invent something completely new with just the same purpose.

Yeah, bad sarcasm skills on my part

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