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by nneonneo 2703 days ago
Because that just makes things slower for no good reason?
1 comments

Sounds like an argument for rejecting HTTP+TLS single-wrap too. (For apt — not in general.)
I was being glib because I didn’t think I needed to explain fully, but here we go.

Double-encrypting something with the same technique is pretty much always a sign of cargo cult crypto. Modern ciphers, like those used by TLS, are strong enough that there’s no reasonable way to break them applied once, and the downside is that applying them twice is making things slower than they need to be for zero added benefit.

On the other hand, TLS and PGP are very different things serving very different purposes, so nesting those makes sense. There is an added benefit from TLS, namely that you ensure that everything is protected in transit - including the HTTP protocol itself (which is currently not protected and which might be subject to manipulation as shown in this post). Plus, it provides some resistance to eavesdropping (and with eSNI + mirrors hosted on shared hosts, that resistance should improve further).