diff --git a/doc/manual/command-ref/conf-file.xml b/doc/manual/command-ref/conf-file.xml
index a7539c4c7..930ed773f 100644
--- a/doc/manual/command-ref/conf-file.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/command-ref/conf-file.xml
@@ -348,7 +348,7 @@ flag, e.g. <literal>--option gc-keep-outputs false</literal>.</para>
 
     <listitem><para>A list of URLs of binary caches, separated by
     whitespace.  The default is
-    <literal>http://cache.nixos.org</literal>.</para></listitem>
+    <literal>https://cache.nixos.org</literal>.</para></listitem>
 
   </varlistentry>
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/command-ref/nix-push.xml b/doc/manual/command-ref/nix-push.xml
index c19f44a61..a3a3c9623 100644
--- a/doc/manual/command-ref/nix-push.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/command-ref/nix-push.xml
@@ -260,7 +260,7 @@ The properties that are currently supported are:
     <listitem><para>Each binary cache has a priority (defaulting to
     50).  Binary caches are checked for binaries in order of ascending
     priority; thus a higher number denotes a lower priority.  The
-    binary cache <uri>http://cache.nixos.org</uri> has priority
+    binary cache <uri>https://cache.nixos.org</uri> has priority
     40.</para></listitem>
 
   </varlistentry>
@@ -278,14 +278,14 @@ URL <replaceable>url</replaceable> has a binary for
 <replaceable>p</replaceable>, Nix fetches
 <replaceable>url/h</replaceable>, where <replaceable>h</replaceable>
 is the hash part of <replaceable>p</replaceable>.  Thus, if we have a
-cache <uri>http://cache.nixos.org</uri> and we want to obtain
-the store path
+cache <uri>https://cache.nixos.org</uri> and we want to obtain the
+store path
 <screen>
 /nix/store/a8922c0h87iilxzzvwn2hmv8x210aqb9-glibc-2.7
 </screen>
 then Nix will attempt to fetch
 <screen>
-http://cache.nixos.org/a8922c0h87iilxzzvwn2hmv8x210aqb9.narinfo
+https://cache.nixos.org/a8922c0h87iilxzzvwn2hmv8x210aqb9.narinfo
 </screen>
 (Commands such as <command>nix-env -qas</command> will issue an HTTP
 HEAD request, since it only needs to know if the
@@ -389,7 +389,7 @@ The fields are as follows:
 references exist (e.g.,
 <filename>/nix/store/2ma2k0ys8knh4an48n28vigcmc2z8773-linux-headers-2.6.23.16</filename>),
 Nix will fetch <screen>
-http://cache.nixos.org/nar/0zzjpdz46mdn74v09m053yczlz4am038g8r74iy8w43gx8801h70.nar.bz2
+https://cache.nixos.org/nar/0zzjpdz46mdn74v09m053yczlz4am038g8r74iy8w43gx8801h70.nar.bz2
 </screen> and decompress and unpack it to
 <filename>/nix/store/a8922c0h87iilxzzvwn2hmv8x210aqb9-glibc-2.7</filename>.</para>
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/introduction/about-nix.xml b/doc/manual/introduction/about-nix.xml
index 56ec39916..efd6cf2bb 100644
--- a/doc/manual/introduction/about-nix.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/introduction/about-nix.xml
@@ -166,8 +166,8 @@ cache</emphasis>, a web server that provides pre-built binaries. For
 instance, when asked to build
 <literal>/nix/store/b6gvzjyb2pg0…-firefox-33.1</literal> from source,
 Nix would first check if the file
-<uri>http://cache.nixos.org/b6gvzjyb2pg0….narinfo</uri> exists, and if
-so, fetch the pre-built binary referenced from there; otherwise, it
+<uri>https://cache.nixos.org/b6gvzjyb2pg0….narinfo</uri> exists, and
+if so, fetch the pre-built binary referenced from there; otherwise, it
 would fall back to building from source.</para>
 
 </simplesect>
diff --git a/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1.8.xml b/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1.8.xml
index 310aa5479..b812915a9 100644
--- a/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1.8.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1.8.xml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
       version="5.0"
       xml:id="ssec-relnotes-1.8">
 
-<title>Release 1.8 (TBA)</title>
+<title>Release 1.8 (December 9, 2014)</title>
 
 <itemizedlist>
 
@@ -13,6 +13,10 @@
   --serve</command> on the remote machine. This requires build slaves
   to be updated to Nix 1.8.</para></listitem>
 
+  <listitem><para>Nix now uses HTTPS instead of HTTP to access the
+  default binary cache,
+  <literal>cache.nixos.org</literal>.</para></listitem>
+
   <listitem><para><command>nix-env</command> selectors are now regular
   expressions. For instance, you can do
 
diff --git a/scripts/download-from-binary-cache.pl.in b/scripts/download-from-binary-cache.pl.in
index e272f139c..fe0195e4e 100644
--- a/scripts/download-from-binary-cache.pl.in
+++ b/scripts/download-from-binary-cache.pl.in
@@ -218,7 +218,7 @@ sub getAvailableCaches {
     }
 
     my @urls = strToList($Nix::Config::config{"binary-caches"} //
-        ($Nix::Config::storeDir eq "/nix/store" ? "http://cache.nixos.org" : ""));
+        ($Nix::Config::storeDir eq "/nix/store" ? "https://cache.nixos.org" : ""));
 
     my $urlsFiles = $Nix::Config::config{"binary-cache-files"}
         // "$Nix::Config::stateDir/profiles/per-user/$userName/channels/binary-caches/*";