How to encrypt conversations in Jabber: step by step instructions. How to encrypt correspondence in Jabber: step by step instructions Jabber registration official

Hello dear amateurs and professionals of communication on the World Wide Web.

The subject of today's article will be Jabber. This is such a tricky contraption that can help us make communication on the Internet easier, and also promises some other nice bonuses.

So what is Jabber? Hearing this name, I think many will remember Jaba Khata - one of the negative characters of the Star Wars movie epic. This creature was, one might say, a symbol of greed and anger, and brought a lot of suffering to good people. So, the subject of our story has nothing in common with this creature, except for the consonance in the names, and in fact it can bring you a lot of benefit and greatly facilitate your life.

Getting started with Jabber

In fact, Jabber is an open protocol (a set of rules for exchanging information) for quickly exchanging messages between users over the Internet. Moments you can see its similarity with, many beloved, ICQ, so today we will not be able to completely do without comparing them.

I will note the main features:

• Openness. As discussed earlier, Jabber is an open protocol. Accordingly, you can use it practically without any restrictions, create your own applications on its basis, that is, do with it almost anything you want without risking falling under the copyright laws. Also, here you will not see any ads, banners and other such nonsense.
• Decentralization... There are many servers, on any of which you can register, and these servers fully interact with each other. Accordingly, this increases reliability, because you will not depend on one specific server and always, if necessary, you can use any other.
• Memorability. After registering on any of the servers, you will receive a JID (in simple words, this is your name on the Jabber network), which will have a format similar to the format (username @ server_name). This makes it much easier to remember the name and at the same time greatly complicates the work of various SPAM bots (automatic programs for sending advertisements and other nasty things), which becomes more difficult to find you on the network.
• Versatility... Data exchange takes place in the universal Unicode encoding (UTF-8). This allows you to use any languages \u200b\u200bof the world in one message without any problems.
• Unlimited... There are almost no restrictions that are, for example, in ICQ. Such as: limitation on the length and frequency of sending messages, the ability to choose your own name, limitation on the number of contacts and many others.
• Ability to create conferences (simultaneous communication of several users). You can create your own conference for communication with friends or business negotiations, or join already created ones in order to talk on a topic of interest to you.
• Functionality (due to the presence of jabber bots). You can add accounts of special programs (jabber bots) to your jabber client contacts list. With their help, you can get a translation from different languages, find out the weather forecast or receive an rss-mailing of your news.
• Compatibility. Thanks to a special system of so-called transports (gateways), Jabber can interact with almost any popular protocol.

These are just some of the various goodies that set Jabber apart from a number of similar services. Finally, it's time to take a closer look and move on to registering your new Jabber account.

Jabber registration

As mentioned earlier, there are many Jabber servers out there. Which one to register on is only a matter of your personal tastes and preferences. One of the largest Russian servers is, therefore, for example, we will register on it. The registration process is very simple and will not take much of your time.

So, go to the site. On the left we will see a standard navigation bar.

Push "Create an account"and go to the screen for registering a new account.

In the “Login” field, enter the name you want to give your account. Fill in all your personal data (of course, no one forces you to write your real city, first and last name) and email address. Please note that the email address must be valid, as a link will be sent to it to confirm registration. Next, in the “Verification code” field, enter the code that you will see on the screen and click “Register”.

It remains only to do the final touch - go to your email address, which you indicated during registration. There you will receive a letter with a link to confirm your registration. Go through it, thereby completing the registration.

How to use Jabber

We now have a registered account, but we still don't know how to use it. To organize communication between users, there are special programs - jabber clients. There are quite a few of them: Bombus (for mobile phones), Psi, Tkabber, JAJC, as well as the multi-protocol Mir anda and QIP.

One of the more popular clients is Psi. The process of downloading and installing this application is extremely simple and self-explanatory. Just download the installation file, run it, select the Russian installation language and follow the further instructions.

So, now we have the jabber client installed. There is only one little thing left - to configure it. Launch Psi. The first thing we see is this window. "Account settings".

Here we can register a new account, as well as use an existing one. Since we have already registered an account for ourselves, we select "Use existing".

In the next screen, enter your Jabber ID (the name of the previously registered account) and.

It will also be helpful to check the boxes in all four settings options. This will greatly improve the usability of the program. Next, click "Save" and finish with this initial account setup.

Psi will now offer you useful tips about the program. If you do not want to read them, then uncheck the box "Show tips at startup" and click Close.

And now, finally, we see the main program window in front of us. Now you can add your friends and acquaintances to your list of Jabber accounts.

It's very easy to do. Click "General", then "Add contact"... After that, in the next window, enter the Jabber ID already known to us, as well as the nickname (name) under which the added contact will be displayed in your list.

Here you can also select the group to which the new contact will belong. Then just click "Add" and the contact will be added to your list.

Jabber conferences

One of the advantages of Jabber is the ability to participate and create conferences, that is, the simultaneous communication of several users. It must be said that this is a great opportunity to chat with several friends at the same time or chat with business partners. Also, on each server there is a sufficient number of already created open conferences to which you can join in order to chat on a topic of interest to you or make new acquaintances.

Conferences are one of the services most often provided by servers. They can often be accessed by name conference.server_name... In our case, it will be conference.jabber.ru.

Now let's try to create our own conference. It must be said that the processes of creating a new conference and entering an existing one are absolutely identical. To do this, in the main Psi window, click "General", and then "Enter the conference".

In the "Server" field, enter the name of the conference server (in our case, it is conference. jabber. ru). Now enter the required conference name and a name under which you will be seen by other participants and, if necessary, set a password to enter. It remains only to click "Enter" and the conference is created. To facilitate further access to the conferences you have previously visited, they are all saved in the history line. To find the one you need, you just need to click on the small black triangle and select the correct name from the drop-down list.

So, as you can see from the picture, immediately after creating a new conference, you are included in the list of moderators, that is, you have all the rights to manage it. Now you can simply invite the right people here, having previously provided them with the conference address and password (if any). You can set a topic for communication by clicking "Topic". To access other settings, click on the black triangle and then select "Configure room"... All the settings there are quite simple and not so important, so we will not dwell on them.

Buns and other goodies from Jabber

Jabber's capabilities are not limited only to communication between users thanks to special programs - jabber bots. When used and configured correctly, they can provide many benefits. There are an infinite number of such bots and they are capable of performing a huge number of functions. I also want to introduce you to one of them. It is called Informer and it has a lot of functions. To have access to it add to your contact list. Now, in order to access the main menu of this bot, simply send it message 0 (zero).

As you can see from here we will get access to a lot of different information and reference books. There are so many possibilities that they don't even fit on one screen. From here you can find out the weather forecast and TV program guide, read the latest news, check the train and plane timetables, and much more. Each of the menu items is accessed by entering a word in square brackets. Each menu is supplied with clear Russian-language comments and even a child can cope with it.

There are a lot of bots like Informer - you can always find their JIDs on the Internet and add them to your contact list.

Transports. Migration from ICQ to Jabber, as an example of use.

As mentioned above, Jabber is compatible with most popular messaging networks. This interaction is carried out using transports (sometimes they are also called gateways) - special services on Jabber servers that convert messages from Jabber to the format of other networks. This is their most popular application, but not the only one. Transports can also be used to access various bots (RSS feeds, weather, email, and more).

To get to know the transports better, I will show you how to use them to access your ICQ contacts in Jabber. In general, I am not a fan of such migrations - I think it is better to try to convince friends (colleagues, clients) to create a jabber account for myself, but this may be useful to someone.

It should be noted that not every server has transport for ICQ. This is due to the fact that ICQ is not a very popular protocol. (yes, don't be surprised J - this is really so, it just happened historically that Asya is most popular in the post-Soviet space, but if you look at the scale of the entire planet, you can understand that she is not very popular outside the former USSR), and besides, it is inherently a commercial product with closed source (recently the situation has begun to change somewhat in a positive direction, but I think that this is not enough).

This means that the primary task is to find a normal ICQ transport. There are several selection criteria. First, there are several flavors of transport such as Openfire, JIT, PyICQt, Spectrum. I will not go into details, but just note that it is better to choose the Spectrum transport type, since it is the latest version and the only one that supports file transfer, but if file transfer is not critical to you, then it does not really matter which one to choose (it should be noted that it is not so easy to find a normally working Spectrum transport on the Internet - I did not succeed, well, maybe you're lucky). Secondly, each ICQ transport has a significant limit on the number of simultaneous connections - 1024, therefore, if you choose too popular transport, then at some point you may not be able to access your contacts due to the server load. And thirdly, you need to choose a stable server with minimal offline time, which is also not so easy. I stopped at icq.dotforward.de transport.

So how do we use the services of the chosen transport? In fact, everything is quite simple. We go to “General” - “Overview of services”.

Now just right click on “ICQ Trans p ort” and select "Register".

In the “UIN” field, enter your ICQ number, and in the “Password” field - the corresponding password. In the “Language” field, put ru and click “ Register now” .

Now in our list in the main Psi window, the following entry will appear.

We double-click on it to view the subscription request for presence, in which you just need to click “Allow”. This completes the registration. There remains only one somewhat unpleasant moment. All the accounts of your ace have already been added to your contact list, but you still have to allow the request to sign up for presence for each separately, so if you have many accounts in the ace, then you will have to view a lot of such messages.

Perhaps that's all. Now you can communicate with your friends via the jabber client.

Afterword

Jabber turned out to be such a simple and at the same time interesting and useful contraption. Enjoy your communication. Stay with us and never be afraid of anything new, because we are always ready to help you in your quest for knowledge.

As always, if you have any questions, additions, thanks and other differences, then write them in the comments to this post.

PS: Thanks to MC Dos team member for the existence of this article

Jabber.ru is a public server for virtual communication in messengers on Windows, Linux, Android platforms, as well as in web clients. The account created in Jabber can be used in any application. The service provides its users with the opportunity to connect with friends and like-minded people anywhere in the world. Plus, make free calls and save the history of correspondence on the server.

check in

This instruction will help you register on Jabber.

The data entry procedure consists of three simple steps.

Step 1

1. On the official website of the service (jabber.ru), on the main page, click on the "Registration" link (menu under the site sections).

Advice! In the additional field, you can choose a different domain name for your account. In addition to jabber.ru, xmpp.ru is available.

3. "Mail": enter your work email address (do not use temporary e-mail boxes).

4. "Enter numbers ...": type in the field the code shown in the picture.

5. Click the "Register" button.

Step # 2

1. Go to the mailbox specified during registration.

2. Open the message from jabber.ru and click the link to continue entering data.

Step # 3

Enter the password twice in the appropriate fields. When composing a symbolic combination, use numbers, lowercase and uppercase Latin letters. Its length should be about 10-15 characters (the best option for stability).

Psi authorization

1. Go to the official page of the Psi messenger (psi-im.org). Click on the "Download" section.

2. Download the distribution kit for your operating system.

3. Install. Select the required program components in the installer window. Click Next.

4. Run the client as administrator.

5. In the additional window "Account Settings" select "Use existing".

6. In the account block that opens, in the XMPP Address field, enter the login and password for the jabber account.

Attention! Use the full format: @ jabber.ru and @ xmpp.ru.

8. At the request of the client in the "General" field, enter additional data: name, nickname, date of birth, phone. And then click Publish.

What other messengers can I use my Jabber account with?

The selection of Jabber server compatible clients is huge. For both computer and mobile devices. Let's consider the most popular ones.

Xabber

Free client for Android devices. Endowed with an ascetic interface and beautiful design. Easy to operate. Supports using multiple profiles, creating conferences.

Gajim

Cross-platform solution (BSD, Linux, Microsoft). Carries out voice and video communications over the network. Knows how to automatically change the status. Provides bookmark management. Endowed with functions for administration of conferences. Sends message notifications to the Gmail service (optional).

QIP Infium

Multi-protocol messenger. Has been operating in the network since 2005. Can use external modules. Has a comfortable interface.

Enjoy your conversations in Jabber!

I think there is no need to explain why a person might need a reliable and secure communication channel. Yes, you can encrypt messages and send them by regular mail, but the very fact of sending it means something. In addition, mail is not always convenient, in our century everyone is used to using instant messengers.

The choice of private messengers is great, but there is no need to talk about the security of some of them. We immediately cut off WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and social networks. How did they deserve it? Probably the best answer would be a tweet from the creator of Telegram Pavel Durov.

There remains the following list of the most famous instant messengers that are considered reliable:

• Telegram;
• Signal;
• Threema;
• Wickr.

There are also lesser known ones, but they all have one common drawback - being linked to a phone number. Of course, you can get worn out and buy a virtual SIM card, but it is inconvenient to do, besides, in this case, it would also be nice to take care of the anonymity of the payment.

Anonymous reference

Articles from this series are published free of charge and are available to everyone. We are convinced that everyone has the right to basic knowledge about the protection of their data.

Other articles in the cycle:

If these materials are trivial for you - great! But you will do a good deed by sending a link to them to your friends, acquaintances and relatives, who are less tech-savvy.

Let's figure out what criteria should be met by a messenger to be truly anonymous. I got the following list.

1. Doesn't require entering a phone number.
2. Doesn't require any personal data.
3. Encryption should not be neglected and used in unsecured chats.
4. There should be at least some confirmation of privacy. At least in the form of locks in different countries.

Since almost all newfangled instant messengers do not fit one of the points, Jabber remains the best option for secure communication - even NSA experts use it for correspondence.

A few words about privacy

The word "privacy" usually means two things that are quite different in their essence. The first is to protect your data from government monitoring and corporate profits from it. The second is protection from targeted wiretapping by third parties (for example, for blackmail or industrial espionage). Both of these aspects are important for us, but we need to understand that in the second case there are no absolute guarantees. You can foresee the technical ways of deanon (for example, any messenger with encryption will protect against MitM), but there are others. An experienced specialist will try to use any grain of information you give out to search, not to mention social engineering methods.

But in order for Jabber to become truly secure, it needs to be configured correctly, which we will now do. For clarity, I have divided this process into several steps.

Step 1. Downloading software

First, we need to download the client itself. I'll take Pidgin as an example - it's cross-platform and easy to configure.

We also need an OTR (Off-the-Record Messaging) plugin that provides encryption. The installer for the Windows version of Pidgin or the sources for building in Linux can be downloaded from the project website.

At the first start, Pidgin will offer to log in with an account, but we will postpone this for now. The fact is that registration will take place from our real IP-address, and it would be good for us to make sure that the IP is hidden even from the owners of the service (what if they decide to happily provide this information to anyone who asks!). For this, you can use any kind of proxy, but we will choose Tor for greater reliability.

Step 2. Forwarding traffic through Tor

If you have Tor Browser installed, you can configure traffic forwarding directly from the registration window in the "Proxy" tab.

After launching Tor Browser and our Jabber client, you need to open the "Tools" tab and select the "Settings" item there, and open the "Proxy" item in the settings. Check the box "Use remote DNS with SOCKS4 proxy", and in the "Proxy type" item select "Tor / Privacy (SOCKS5)"

In the Node item, specify 127.0.0.1 and choose port 9150. This is the standard Tor port, although the 9050 variation is sometimes encountered.

As you might have guessed, Tor Browser must be running and listening on its port all the time you are chatting. Turn it on before starting Pidgin - then it will not swear at the lack of connection to the server.

Now the Pidgin traffic is going through Tor, and we can start registering. First, we need to decide on the server on which we want to create an account. Of course, you can deploy your own server, but then maintaining anonymity will become even more difficult.

Step 3. Choose a server

There are a huge number of servers, the owners of many of them claim that they do not keep logs. But this is impossible to verify. You can admire how the leaked log will look in the picture.

When choosing a server, first of all it is worth looking at which country it is located in. The EU, the United States and the country in which you live are obviously a bad option. Ideally, if the server is located where it is prohibited by law to collect logs. Here is a small list of servers that are trusted by many hackers, both in the CIS and abroad. But note that some of the servers are in the US.

Little things matter

Take the choice of a nickname as an example. It would seem an elementary item, but many people scorch on it. You may not remember that you have already used it somewhere else, but Google remembers everything.

The second subtle point is that it would be good not to use nicknames with symbols that have a Cyrillic counterpart. Not all servers have filters configured that prohibit such tricks, so at some point you may have a twin whose name letters do not look different, but have different codes.

Step 4. Register on the server

Having decided on the username and password, you can start registering on the server. Open the client and select the "Accounts" tab, and in it the "Account Management" item (or just press Ctrl + A).

In the window that appears, click "Add", the registration and authorization window will open.

Here we need to do the following:

1. Select XMPP protocol from the drop-down list.
2. Enter the desired username.
3. Enter the domain of the server on which you are going to create an account.
4. The resource can be skipped, since it does not affect registration (in fact, this is just an indication of which device this server entrance is tied to - in the roster of your interlocutors it will be written from which resource you entered).
5. Enter the desired password.
6. Check (or not check) the checkbox to remember the password (I recommend not to check it and not to store the password anywhere except in your head, because if someone gains access to your computer, the password will already be entered).
7. Be sure to check the "Create a new account on the server" checkbox (unless, of course, you have already registered before).

After entering all the data, a separate window for user registration may appear. You will have to enter everything one more time and click OK.

Step 5. Turn on OTR

Accounting is ready, and you can start setting up encryption. I recommend one of two options: PGP or OTR. Here I'll take OTR as an example - it provides a high level of security and is easy to configure. However, when using it, messages in the logs are not encrypted - so for complete reliability it is better to disable them. But on the server, the picture looks like the following.

Since we have already downloaded and installed the plugin, it can be activated from the client. Open Pidgin, click "Tools" and select the "Modules" item.

Activate the Off-the-Record (OTR) plugin.

In the module settings window, we first need to generate a key for our account. Select the account for which you want to create a key, and click "Create". The key generation window will appear.

Keys are generated quickly, but sometimes there is a slight lag at this step. Do not be afraid! Pidgin doesn't hang, it's just a little busy. When the work is over, press Ok and you will see your "fingerprint" of forty characters (five groups of eight characters each).

Now check the following boxes:

• "Use secure conversations";
• "Automatically start a secure conversation";
• "Demand protection of the conversation";
• Do not log OTR conversations.

Keeping a journal is entirely voluntary. If it comes in handy, then turn it on, if not, then remember that anyone who can access your computer - remote or completely direct - can read it.

Well, the last checkmark is Show Otr button in toolbar... She simply adds a chat security and interlocutor authentication button to the interface.

Step 6. Authenticate the interlocutor and protect the chat

In fact, you already have a secure communication channel. To add an interlocutor, press "Interlocutors" and select "Add interlocutor".

Choosing an interlocutor.

And click "Add".

Now the interlocutor will receive a request, and when he confirms it, you can start a chat. The security status can be viewed directly in the chat window. If encryption is not enabled, then there it will be written: "Not protected". By clicking on it, you will see a menu.

If you start a secure conversation, then the inscription will change to "Not identified." - this means that the chat is protected, but you need to authenticate the interlocutor to be sure that he is exactly who he claims to be.

There are three ways to authenticate an interlocutor.

After the interlocutor is authenticated, the green inscription "Protected" will finally appear on the button.

Step 7. Configuring the mobile client

Jabber clients with encryption support are also available on mobile devices. For example, ChatSecure for iOS and Android. Just in case, I warn you that the Android application is not listed on the official website and requires a lot of privileges for the messenger, so use it at your own peril and risk.

Registration in the application is similar to registration on a computer. If you already have an account, then instead of creating a new account, select Existing Account on the main page.

And enter your data.

If you want to create a new account, then click "Create a new account" and fill in all the data. A big plus of ChatSecure is that it can send traffic through Tor without additional tweaks.

ChatSecure also has a list of private servers - choose which one you like, or, if you've already chosen before, enter the address in the Custom field at the very bottom.

Now you just need to click on the new message icon and click "Add contact" in the menu that appears.

Enter the contact's address.

And authenticate it with one of the methods we have already listed.

U’r awesome and private 🙂

Congratulations, now you know how to set up a communication channel that will be well protected from tracking and interception! However, in order to achieve the highest level of privacy, you will have to go further - still get confused and deploy your own server, and also replace OTR with PGP. But more about that some other time.