To answer the why plain text, the feature this talks about is the Okta Secure Web App - basically if an app cant do proper SSO you can set it up as SWA which just acts like a password manager. The Okta browser plugin will just fill out the login form of whatever site for you. One bonus feature with SWAs is the admin can set a password for all users, making it a cheap way to share an account transparently for all your users.
In the words of Raymond Chen this exploit is basically being on the other side of the air tight hatch