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Message-ID: <4BA17A9F.2000808@monai.ca>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:58:07 -0700
From: Steven Monai <steve+cygwin AT monai DOT ca>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: incomplete/corrupted setup.exe
References: <1268766945 DOT 5263 DOT ezmlm AT cygwin DOT com>  <Pine DOT LNX DOT 4 DOT 58 DOT 1003171042591 DOT 9914 AT mail3 DOT jubileegroup DOT co DOT uk> <20100317150649 DOT GA29284 AT ednor DOT casa DOT cgf DOT cx>
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On 2010/03/17 8:06 AM, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Since I haven't seen any guarantees that adding https would fix this
> problem I'm not convinced that this justifies the amount of work
> involved.  So, until the mailing list is flooded with people who can't
> download setup.exe because we don't have https access, I am satisfied
> with not doing anything.

That's too bad. Using SSL would nearly eliminate the risk of a MITM
delivering a bogus setup.exe in place of the real thing to some
unsuspecting user.

As an alternative to setting up SSL on cygwin.com, what about the idea
of crypto-signing (e.g. with gnupg) every release of setup.exe, and then
posting the signature alongside the binary? I know I would breathe a
little easier if I were able to positively verify the authenticity of a
given setup.exe binary.

The public key would need to be distributed via channels other than just
cygwin.com, to make it more difficult to spoof. Fortunately, there are a
number of public PGP/GPG key servers to fill that purpose.

-SM
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