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I wonder why did they choose to investigate plain text connection to XMPP server instead of SSL or TLS ? As far as I recall there's "starttls" command on standard 5222 port, after that things get encrypted and all their tcpdump tricks fail. Almost none of the XMPP clients use plain text connection nowadays.

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> Almost none of the XMPP clients use plain text connection nowadays.

Everything shown in the article works with or without TLS enabled. It doesn't matter. The server-side party sees cleartext XMPP packets passing the server.

> all their tcpdump tricks fail

There are no "tricks" in the article. It is just capturing network traffic. The point here is that XMPP traffic isn't magically invisible to third parties that observe the network traffic as some people claim.

And, by the way, federated servers use SSL/TLS as well. Of course server admins can do verything, like peer into your traffic or grab passwords from database, because they are admins!

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