> and then I send you an SMS with the sha256 hash that you can verify Your blog isn't doing that, and none of your readers are verifying the hashes. If signatu

> and then I send you an SMS with the sha256 hash that you can verify Your blog isn't doing that, and none of your readers are verifying the hashes. If signature checks aren't being done automatically within the software, then for all practical purposes they might as well not exist for the vast majority of people. Sending an SMS with a sha256 is bad security because for the average person it is equivalent to just sending them an SMS message. They will not verify the sha256 and it is impossible to train them to. And sure, I use SMS for some stuff, but I don't pretend that it's secure or that encrypted messaging doesn't matter because trusting trust isn't a solved problem yet. > Debian survived for decades delivering their packages over HTTP No, Debian used what is essentially their own certificate authority (PGP and Web of Trust). Your blog does not have the same security guarantees as Debian's package manager, and the fact that Debian relies on package signing using PGP and Web of Trust is strong evidence that they do believe that in-software automatic verification of message integrity is important for delivering code. Everyone acts like Debian is proof that you don't need security, but package managers throw error messages when package signatures are wrong, just like your browser does when it can't verify an SSL cert. Because in both cases, verifying message integrity matters, even though it doesn't get rid of the entire problem of trust on its own. > But the reality is that it is hardly "everyone" [...] a MITM must be, by definition, in the middle. It's enough people. It doesn't have to literally be everyone on the entire planet. You should not be multiplying your attack vectors unnecessarily when there are trivially implemented, free, widely available methods for removing those attack vectors. ---- What a lot of this boils down to: > For the same reason, even an MD5 hash is good enough most of the times. There is a difference between leaving your shed unlocked because you're hoping your neighborhood is nice and no one will steal your lawnmower, and going onto a forum and arguing that locks are unnecessary because you leave your shed unlocked. What you are essentially arguing here is not that HTTP is secure, you are arguing that bad security is OK. Which, fine, make that argument if you want, but "I don't need to be secure" is very different from "HTTPS doesn't matter for security."