Alleged "Snake Oil" Crypto Company Sues Over Boos at Black Hat
DannyB writes:
From ArsTechnica . . .
Alleged "Snake Oil" Crypto Company Sues Over Boos at Black Hat:
Grant's presentation, entitled "Discovery of Quasi-Prime Numbers: What Does this Mean for Encryption," was based on a paper called "Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from a Novel Quasi-PrimeAnalytical Methodology." That work was published in March of 2019 through Cornell University's arXiv.org by Grant's co-author Talal Ghannam-a physicist who has self-published a book called The Mystery of Numbers: Revealed through their Digital Root as well as a comic book called The Chronicles of Maroof the Knight: The Byzantine. The paper, a slim five pages, focuses on the use of digital root analysis (a type of calculation that has been used in occult numerology) to rapidly identify prime numbers and a sort of multiplication table for factoring primes.
[...] The Black Hat talk did not go smoothly. People had to be ejected from the room by security because they were heckling and booing Grant.
[...] Cryptographers were extremely skeptical, with some referring to the talk as "snake oil crypto." Even before the event, Mark Carney, a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, wrote a paper refuting the claims Grant and Ghannam had made in theirs.
Well that could have gone better. Maybe the court trial will be more orderly.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.