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posted by martyb on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-the-factoring dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @09:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @09:59AM (#884658)

    Yeah, yeah, what do I know, right? Well, don't be so dismissive of something you don't understand. Just because it's based on numerology, and possibly even traffic patterns on the NJ Turnpike, doesn't mean it isn't groundbreaking work.

    I consulted my Official Harry Potter Spell and Conjuring Book (the real one, with the stitched binding and gold leaf inlay). And right in the back, just past the "Dragons - Free To Good Home" ads, it says that there are five dimensions. It even notes that the band "The Fifth Dimension" was purposefully created to ease acceptance of the concept of the existence of five dimensions.

    For those naysayers who aren't familiar with encryption, I'll simplify it for you. Think of encryption as a game of numeric scrabble. You have a bunch of tiles, each with a single number on them (0 - 9). You have to arrange them into two very long number sequences (you get to pick because there's no wrong answers in encryption). Once you do that you put one number sequence into the bag with all the letters of your data, and shake it up really good. When you empty the bag you have encrypted data. You save the other numbers to decrypt your data, which is a little too complicated to explain in this post. But I can give you a hint: that's where the numerology and praying comes in.

    So give these Royal Scammers a chance. And if they ask you to help them by signing up for their version of SETI At Home, do them a solid. You could be just one alien civilization away from proving them right.

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