XMPP security

If you are deploying your XMPP server for the world to access, you will want to make sure it is secure! Out of the box, many XMPP servers including Prosody, provide security mechanisms that are easy to set up.

First, let's talk about server certificates. This will be a quick discussion. If you want a secure server, you need to get a server certificate! You can get a certificate from any certificate authority. Recommended authorities are LetsEncrypt (https://letsencrypt.org) and StartSSL (http://www.startssl.com), which offer free certificates. In order to use SSL with Prosody you’ll need to edit the prosody.cfg.lua file and add the following configuration (pointing to your certificate files):

ssl = {
  key = "/path/to/prosody.key";
  certificate = "/path/to/prosody.crt";
 } 

Next, let's talk about encryption. You should ensure that the communication from client to server, and vice versa, is encrypted rather than kept as readable text. All XMPP servers support encryption...