That's the fundamental trust-bootstrapping problem. You need an independent way to establish trust in the first interaction. In SSL, it's the (very flawed) CA model (never mind that nothing about SSL protects you if the website content is compromised). In this case, you can verify the download file signatures on keybase.io which is probably significantly safer than the CA model is.

Sure, in this day and age, it's slightly disconcerting to see a security-related website that isn't SSL, but on the other hand, the tendency to blindly trust the green padlock is probably even more dangerous.

http://keepass.info/integrity_sig.html https://keybase.io/reichl

Uh, sure.

But TBH, if I am going to go through the trouble of MITM'ing the site, then I am going to rewrite the site to:

* include my awesome fingerprint

* link to my awesome key

* link to my l33t entry on keybase

Side note - the CA model has issues, but in what world is pointing users to a VC funded startup that has only been around for two years "safer" than the flawed, but well understood security model of the CA system?

I don't mean to impugn Keybase, from watching them I like what they are doing, but bootstrapping trust based on content they control is hardly ideal, and I would be shocked to hear someone say that Keybase is more reliable or more trustworthy than the CA/Browser Forum (10 years old) and the browser vendors (>20 years old depending on vendor/code base).

I don't really see how this is relevant.

It may be flawed, but clowning the CA model is beyond the abilities of the vast majority of attackers.

Setting up a MITM attack is not exactly trivial, either.