[Tails-dev] download over http by default?

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Author: Jacob Appelbaum
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
New-Topics: [Tails-dev] secure download tool | was download over http by default?
Subject: [Tails-dev] download over http by default?
Hi,

When upgrading a tails machine today, I noticed that the default
download link is HTTP. We've done some statistics on the number of users
that actually bother to download signatures - it basically borders on
none for some software. Does Tails find that for every ISO, users
download the signature? Ten to one? Perhaps one out of ever thousand
downloads?

I really strongly encourage that the default download link should be
secure - if there was a tool to download updates and it automatically
checked the signatures, I'd think it was perhaps OK to use HTTP.
Probably not but well, I could at least believe that someone might
complete both steps. Without such a tool, I think this is merely a
recipe for disaster.

We carry a secure mirror here:

https://archive.torproject.org/amnesia.boum.org/tails/stable/

If you guys can't handle HTTPS traffic, I really encourage you to link
to our HTTPS site as the default. If nothing else, I believe that some
browsers also pin our certs. That at least changes the game to something
a bit harder.

All the best,
Jacob