The speedup was apparently 4x, so rather 2 bit, or as the layman would say,
only 1/4th the work. But thats not the point. If you can't trust them to deploy a fix to a stupid issue in half a year, why would you trust them to do it in a day should a serious issue arise?
But I agree, its a stupid issue. Snowden tells us endpoint security is the problem. So maybe the Windows 1Password client should stop
1) checking for updates over HTTP (no s here!)
Bonus: you can specify the update URL in the response
Bonus: you can specify parts of the dialogue shown to the user
2) download the update over HTTP
3) execute it with elevated rights without verifying it
This was maybe fixed in the last build from 2013-08-07:
Improved security of automatic updates (using https:// when checking for a new version). Reported by David Thiel, iSEC Partners.
Since they use a CDN to distribute updates, these might still be downloaded over HTTP and still not be verified prior to running.
-- Update --
You got to be kidding me. So I upgraded my fake update server with a self-signed certificate (with a wrong CN, no less) and of course, the 1Password client happily accepts it.
Theres some good news, though. They now verify that the downloaded binary is signed (with their own key)!
But since I can control the update server that tells the client what to download, I can just supply the client with an old 1Password build that is still signed but does not implement the strong(isher) scheme in build #333. The installer doesn't complain and what user keeps track of build numbers anyway.