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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 25 2019, @01:33AM
Let's try this instead:
I have no idea if this paper is valid or useful. It probably isn't. But debunkers need to do better.