14 ms·

Black Hat Talk About ‘Time AI’ Causes Uproar, Is Deleted by Conference

237 points by lnguyen 7y ago

naner 7y ago
Interesting move trying to push snake-oil in a room full of SMEs.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Yeah, selling snake-oil encryption to a group of professional infosec researchers and cryptographers? Do they even a have brain...
  - emn13 7y ago
    I'm guessing there aren't all that many cryptographers at blackhat; that's quite a different specialty, isn't it? Then again, is also pays to know enough about cryptography to at least identify poorly applies crypto, so there are likely enough people in attendance with surprisingly in-depth knowledge even if crypto isn't technically their specialty.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      Yes, it was what I meant to say.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > I'm guessing there aren't all that many cryptographers at blackhat; that's quite a different specialty, isn't it? Well, it's not "quite a different specialty" in the same sense that zoology is quite a different specialty from what you would expect at Black Hat. There's some overlap between cryptography and Black Hat.
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      You don't have to be a medical expert to recognize that a guy selling crystal-infused snake oil probably hasn't found the cure to cancer.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Thomas Pornin and JP Aumasson were at the talk, Thomas because he's crypto review board (along with a bunch of other cryptography people, many also in attendance) and JP because he spoke at the conference this year. We have a pretty strong cryptography program going on at Black Hat. I think we might be the best industry offensive crypto conference at this point.
  - lordnacho 7y ago
    Maybe they just wanted to be able to say they spoke at BH and maybe a short clip to put on their site? Most bad or boring presentations are not called out publicly on several media.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Plenty of "security professionals" buy snake oil by the tanker full
- sak5sk 7y ago
  You don't need to be a cryptographer or even in the computer science field. One look at that hilarious promo video by any layman with any common sense is enough to see total bs that it is. I couldn't stomach to watch it all the way through.
  - jlgaddis 7y ago
    The only thing they missed in that video is a mention of "blockchain".
deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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Chris_Chambers 7y ago
This site is absolute cancer on mobile. Their domain should be blacklisted from HN.
- bigums 7y ago
  Vice? Looks great on mine.
  - ypcx 7y ago
    On desktop/chrome, it almost gave me a seizure, as the Twitter video element is "shaking" ever so slightly, and when scrolled more down, the rest of the page elements where shaking/vibrating too. Definitely altered my psyche, which is interesting.
jedberg 7y ago
I've always hated sponsored talks. I understand why they exist -- because they are huge money makers for the conference organizers. Occasionally, you get a good one, where it's a talk about a general topic that happens to have a light tie in with the commercial product. Or it's a very good commercial product that people want an in depth talk about. But usually, it's just a 30 minute ad that's all fluff. I try to avoid them, but sometimes I volunteer at conferences and get stuck managing a sponsored talk track, and man is it depressing.
jumelles 7y ago
> Usually, talks submitted to Black Hat go through a thorough approval process managed by a review board of industry experts. But, as in this case, companies can also pay to play and get these sponsored talks, which are not vetted for quality. That just seems ripe for abuse like this. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before.
- mcpherrinm 7y ago
  The main filter is the expense -- I don't see "sponsored talks" listed with a price-tag online, but I'd guess about USD $20000. There's plenty of boring, possibly snakeoil security products that get peddled every year. Usually they must have some foundation in reality to be able to pay Blackhat.
- hannob 7y ago
  Of course this has happened before. It's just usually nobody who has a clue cares about these sponsored talks. Do you think all the other products they pitch there live up to the promises made? This is just a bit extreme in its wording, so it's causing attention.
p1esk 7y ago
I also suspect the guy (Robert Grant) is a conman, but whatever scheme he is running is quite elaborate: https://strathspeycrown.com/team https://strathspeycrown.com/team Does anyone have an insight as to what their endgame is, and where their funding is coming from?
- RL_Quine 7y ago
  Having a team page like that is your first red flag. https://strathspeycrown.com/subsidiary-companies-investments/ https://strathspeycrown.com/subsidiary-companies-investments... > "Strathspey Crown is a visionary portfolio of transformational businesses, focused on the most complex sectors of healthcare, energy, and technology." This seems to be the parent company, check out some of the goofy things they claim to been involved in. Quotes like "changing the paradigm", "the internet of wellbeing", "where little things make a big difference". It's cookie cutter generic websites for every one of them, most of the time I can't work out what their product is supposed to be or what they're claiming to be working on.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    But the interesting part is that at least some of the people involved in these companies seem real (e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/in/amira-val-baker-47047123/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/amira-val-baker-47047123/)
    - RL_Quine 7y ago
      One of the products seems to be real and FDA approved. https://www.drugs.com/newdrugs/fda-approves-jeuveau-prabotulinumtoxina-xvfs-temporary-improvement-appearance-frown-lines-4911.html https://www.drugs.com/newdrugs/fda-approves-jeuveau-prabotul...
      - elliekelly 7y ago
        I don’t understand what it supposedly does that’s any different/better than Botox?
jlgaddis 7y ago
The company has issued a "statement regarding recent allegations made at Black Hat 2019 [0]. For anyone interested, the statement links to the guy's paper [1] "where he identified the first Infinite Prime Number prediction pattern". > Utilizing multi-dimensional encryption technology, including time, music’s infinite variability, artificial intelligence, and most notably mathematical constancies to generate entangled key pairs, ... I'm not even remotely qualified to speak about any of it but it certainly gives the feeling that they're selling "silicon snake oil". My bullshit detector hit 11 after reading the above. Supposedly, Grant's discovery enables "the accurate prediction of prime numbers". I'm unable to find out just how many previously unknown prime numbers he has successfully predicted thus far, however. Anyone know? [0]: https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/08/crown-sterling-issues-statement-regarding-recent-allegations-made-at-black-hat-2019/ https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/08/crown-sterling-issues-s... [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.08570 https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.08570
- RL_Quine 7y ago
  > Well, I did allude to a draft preprint of some arguments that point out the major issues with Grant's paper he is presenting at @BlackHatEvents. Here is that draft: Reviewing Recent Prime Generation Methods for Breaking Cryptographic Keys https://twitter.com/LargeCardinal/status/1159204973282025472 https://twitter.com/LargeCardinal/status/1159204973282025472 https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Breaking_Crypto-5e.pdf https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Bre...
  - dmix 7y ago
    So it sounds like the people in attendance who challenged it live were aware of it beforehand and showed up to call him out? The linked Twitter post saying "Sad to see such charlatans given a stage at Black Hat" was on August 2nd. Edit: and a paper critiquing the math was published July 2019: https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Breaking_Crypto-5e.pdf https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Bre...
    - chmod775 7y ago
Animats 7y ago
Why did Black Hat delete it, rather than making snide comments about it? A video of people laughing at the speaker would have been great.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  The speaker('s company) paid a hefty price for him to be there to present. Black Hat doesn't wanna dissuade any other potential vendors from not giving them their money.
  - Twisol 7y ago
    I feel like you could make the same case for not loudly renouncing "Time AI". If Black Hat were to stand by this sponsor, I would wonder if other potential sponsors might actively withhold funds specifically to avoid being associated with "Time AI". Like the YouTube adpocalypse -- the media storm around certain kinds of content made advertisers uncomfortable with being associated with that content.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      Well part of the point with sponsors is to find someone that can make money without 'selling out' and doing major damage to themselves as a conference brand. "Time AI" isn't paying nearly enough money to be worth the damage that not renouncing them would do.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    I think dissuading these sorts of people would be a win for everybody, at least it puts the bar a little higher for the next company who is buying themselves a spot.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Black Hat publicly disavowed the talk. Tell us more about what Black Hat does and doesn't want to do?
    - 7y ago
stebann 7y ago
When several companies like this one look related and are trying to push some of their "products" into a pro market, it really smells like a money laundering scheme. I have seen schemes like this one in South-America, Brazil specifically, related to "religious" indoctrination. Hope someone in USA investigates this. It looks well funded.
H8crilA 7y ago
Here's a full portfolio of snake oil "companies" that these guys (or this guy?) engage in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paZWjiJIk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paZWjiJIk8
dguido 7y ago
There's an article from PC Mag with a few more details: https://www.pcmag.com/news/370119/black-hat-attendees-sponsored-session-was-snake-oil-crypto https://www.pcmag.com/news/370119/black-hat-attendees-sponso... Here's a video of Robert Grant giving an introduction to his Time AI nonsense from their party the night before: https://www.dropbox.com/s/llp24loq5odvyhk/Crown%20Sterling%20CEO%20-%20BH%2008.07.19.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/llp24loq5odvyhk/Crown%20Sterling%2... JP Aumasson live tweeted their presentation at Blackhat: https://twitter.com/veorq/status/1159559785068429312 https://twitter.com/veorq/status/1159559785068429312
- tastroder 7y ago
  Do I understand those Twitter threads correctly in that BH security removed you from the room? The heck?
  - dguido 7y ago
    Yes, and it makes sense that I was thrown out. It's not like the security guard knows the talk is bullshit. He just saw a guy (me) yelling that, "all you employees of this guy should quit and find real jobs!" I think that was an appropriate response in the moment. The true failure happened when Blackhat decided it was ok to accept money from a con man.
    - tastroder 7y ago
      Fair enough, I naively assumed that security at BH had people embedded that would be able to make that call. But yeah, agree on all fronts then, thanks for standing up to him.
lordnacho 7y ago
Snake oil for sure, but this is merely a snake oil sales guy who walked into a room full of people willing to call him out. The rest of society is not so courageous. You only need to look at various management consultants, new age healers, and religion to find more people who obviously know nothing about how the world actually is, but are never held to account.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  >and religion Going to disagree with you there, you would know this guy is deliberately being manipulative with symbolism if you took understanding from religious art. He's just compressed several parts of the collective unconscious into one video without meaning for whatever dumb reason. Time is growing more important than space, that'll be building up to 2024. The big slow interstellar style "bwooah"s have stopped and more of the billie eillish fast paced music will build up to 2024. EDIT: anyone want to reply as well as downvote?
  - uryga 7y ago
    > Time is growing more important than space, that'll be building up to 2024. that part makes you sound a bit crank-ish... could you explain this a bit more? what's happening in 2024?
  - _0ffh 7y ago
    I didn't downvote, but only because I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.
  - extropy 7y ago
    You are impyling my bullshit detector needs "regligious art" class. Without explaining in laymans terms, you implicitly position yourself being "smarter than me" and I should be understanding what you say or go learn about it. I'm fine as it is, thank you.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Black Hat is like a $2k ~ $3k conference. Even though many people there are sponsored by their companies, it's still expensive and I suspect people who put this kind of value in this conference aren't going to sit around and put up with what they know is bullshit.
ian0 7y ago
Sure it's not documentary makers seeing how far they can take it? This looks like a piss-take.
- jaynetics 7y ago
  the team page supports your point ( https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/05/alan-green/ https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/05/alan-green/ ): "Alan [...] dedicated the last fifteen years to decrypting mathematical codes in Shakespeare’s writings that have revealed unknown sacred geometry hidden in the pyramids of Giza." i don't think anyone will invest so much time into such a bungled attempt of con-artistry, so this does look more like a (costly) hoax. maybe it is intended to discredit certain players in SecOps, Sokal-affair-style ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair ).
  - jowsie 7y ago
    It's more likely to be along the same lines as the Nigerian Prince scam emails. They look absolutely ridiculous to anyone with the slightest ability to critically think about the situation. Those aren't the people they're targeting, though.
    - jaynetics 7y ago
      even in the Nigerian prince mails they don't go out of their way to give the prince a biography that could have been written by Erich von Däniken.
mansilladev 7y ago
Perhaps he’s from the future. But I’d guess he’d say, “Only _time_ will tell.”
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  Upvoted for more dad jokes on HN.
  - mansilladev 7y ago
    Yeah, tough crowd. Pulled the quote right from that promo reel.
jacquesm 7y ago
Giving a sponsored talk at a conference that attracts a lot of experts in the field is an interesting attempt at hacking, had they gotten away with it they would have had that much more bragging rights while trying to land investor money. Outright scams are pretty rare but I've come across them a couple of times in the last decade, it always amazes me that investors would even begin to consider them.
- tastroder 7y ago
  In an era of kickstarter scams I'm not sure that there's that much of a difference between this and "getting away with it". I get that vetting sponsored talks is hard from a BH perspective but... just looking at how the presenter downplays this in their twitter responses, I'm pretty sure they'll use it for bragging rights anyway. Just like they apparently claim to have published something with an arxiv paper. It is pretty doubtful that anybody will remember this incident in a month when they pitch it to a non-technical crowd, worst case for them is using a slightly different name to avoid superficial search engine due diligence.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    They might even use the 'Secrets that Black Hat does not want you to know' angle to their advantage.
- seren 7y ago
  It reminds me of the Steorn / Orbo free energy machine. They were so confident they bought a whole page ad in the Economist and setup a public demo of their device. At some point, you don't know if they are scammers or if they have deluded themselves so hard they believe it.
1023bytes 7y ago
One of their sister companies actually sells healing crystals: https://arkcrystals.com/ https://arkcrystals.com/
- chvid 7y ago
  "Replicating the magnetohydrodynamics naturally occurring in a variety of astrophysical objects, which couples plasma modes to the harmonic structure of the quantum vacuum — the Harmonic Flux Resonator (HFR) replicates and transfers quantum energy." ... it says on the website and then it links on to a website which offers energy derived from vacuum: Vacuum Energy Energy extracted directly from the vacuum. Nothing to burn, nothing to consume, nothing to destroy. No fumes, no toxins, no limitations. Nothing short of a paradigm shift which will alter the course of human kind forever. https://torustech.com/technology/ https://torustech.com/technology/ Is it one of those websites that is really marketing for a new sci-fi show?
  - jotm 7y ago
    > Energy extracted directly from the vacuum. Nothing to burn, nothing to consume, nothing to destroy. No fumes, no toxins, no limitations. So, it is nothing. Shieeet I wish I could sell nothing to people for money.
    - chvid 7y ago
      It is a free energy machine / perpetual motion machine. That is always good if you are tech investor to have that sort of thing in your portfolio :-D
  - GordonS 7y ago
    > the Harmonic Flux Resonator That's hilarious, I'd swear I've heard that on Star Trek Next Generation an age ago!
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
      Wasn't that the thing that powered the DeLorean in Back to the Future?
rv-de 7y ago
https://www.robertedwardgrant.com/about https://www.robertedwardgrant.com/about That's Robert Grant's personal website. Check it out. It's hilarious.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  > He was formerly CEO and President of Bausch and Lomb Surgical in June of 2010. So he was in the position for... one month? Am I reading that correctly?
  - rficcaglia 7y ago
    From this it seems he was there at least until 2011: https://news.chapman.edu/2011/05/16/jerry-lewis-among-commencement-speakers/ https://news.chapman.edu/2011/05/16/jerry-lewis-among-commen... PR when he was appointed in 2010: https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/bausch-and-lomb-names-b-robert-e-grant-b-as-ceo-and-president-of-its-surgical-business-/ https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/bausch-and-lomb-na... Clearly the guy made a fortune from Botox, knows how to leverage that success and build an organization around buzzwords that attract investor money. To be fair, is that any worse than Silicon Valley VC?
- _0ffh 7y ago
  He's linked a TEDx talk of his. Kinda figures. I suppose he couldn't tell the difference between that and a proper conference.
  - hobofan 7y ago
    > I suppose he couldn't tell the difference between that and a proper conference. Most people can't. At this point I've basically given up on trying to correct people that call TEDx talks TED talks.
    - rv-de 7y ago
      there are good TEDx talks though and also several pretty low quality TED talks.
misnome 7y ago
I have somewhat sympathy for Black Hat, especially with the "pay for talks" model that they seem to get funding from, it's easy for these things to get a platform. I went to a maker space in the UK that occasionally held talks - one day they had a talk by some "Alkaline water" machine manufacturer (not the manufacturer, but one of the pyramid scheme dupes). Like many of these, it was a random mix of diverse actual (irrelevant) science, pseudoscience bullshit, conspiracy theory (as to why this wasn't e.g. used in medicine), appeal to authority and outright fraud, gish-galloped together into one giant mess. The diversity of the actual science means that there is _nobody_ who can be an expert in all areas and so refuting can be waved away. Many of the otherwise practically intelligent people (although a wide mix came to this space) apparently couldn't tell or didn't care. Several people actually bought machines from them. I suppose all of this is (in these contexts) is preying on the tendency for competent scientists to automatically question their own assumptions, but even when they do most of the time it just feeds their "controversy" argument using people who would never have bought it anyway. Con-artists continue to thrive for a reason; even with the canniest/most suspicious people there's an arbitrage on how long they can survive in one place before moving onto the next target.
- liability 7y ago
  > diversity of the actual science means that there is _nobody_ who can be an expert in all areas and so refuting can be waved away. No, you just overthought it. Consider Diogenes' refutation of Zeno's motion paradoxes. Did he invent calculus? No, he stood up and walked around. If somebody tries to sell you a magical medicine water alkalizer machine, just throw alkaseltzer tablets at their face until they fuck off. That's all the refutation that's needed. A technical 'rigorous' refutation wouldn't be understood by the rubes such con men target anyway.
- 0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
  I don’t have any sympathy, but this isn’t really that big of a deal. Black hat is expensive as fuck and they could have done without the money. I think they do less than DEFCON while also charging more but that’s just my hot take. I don’t think they’ll suffer any practical reputation damage (like people choosing NOT to go to Black hat). It’ll just be a meme and something they laugh about.
Ice_cream_suit 7y ago
"The author will show that when applying this simple operation to magical numbers, and to many other groups of numbers, an amazing world of hidden interconnections; repetition cycles; numerical symmetries; and geometrical patterns emerge. Especially when the geometrical (the circle) and the numerical aspects of the digital root world are combined together. It is in this circular/numerical world where numbers, individually and collectively, exist in their most basic, yet perfect and symmetrical states, and where the basic nine numbers are differentiated into three groups of amazing properties, which will be shown to underlie the essence of the whole universe; from the atom and its forces to the solar system and its geometry." Right....
lucb1e 7y ago
I don't get why we give this so much attention. The authors are clearly kidding, mentally ill, or have a purpose beyond my understanding (this can't be the easiest way to launder money).
- andrepd 7y ago
  The purpose is to make money selling snake oil, not anything more complicated than that.
- mruts 7y ago
  The founder is Mormon. This is how (from experience) Mormons talk. They also love talking about Da Vinci, Greek philosophers, and the founding fathers. Mix in numerology, lots of crying, and you get your typical Mormon.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  It would be fun if this turned out to be a Sokal-style prank to illustrate the reputational risks to conferences of accepting sponsored talks.
- dguido 7y ago
  This kind of attention is great for us, bad for him. Now there's a PC Mag, Vice, and Gizmodo article indexed high up on Google when you search Time AI that debunks him.
- p1esk 7y ago
  purpose beyond my understanding Depending on the purpose, this might need more attention.
0XAFFE 7y ago
Reminds me a bit of https://timecube.2enp.com/ https://timecube.2enp.com/
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  It's like TimeCube guy had wealthy parents or something like that.
thatguy27 7y ago
Did anyone back up the video before it got taken down?
mruts 7y ago
Here's a instagram post from the founder: https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/vp/1ba57134a58455de0595824423feaf0c/5DEB85B3/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/p640x640/66697542_482125555666888_8950706368114846991_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent.cdninstagram.com https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/vp/1ba57134a58455de0595824... Also look at his papers. He likes to draw a lot instead of doing math.
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  It reminds me of the "math stuff" from Aronofsky's movie "PI"...with the exception that I enjoyed "PI".
- ghthor 7y ago
  You're an asshole. Geometric relationships between numbers are doing math.
  - dang 7y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't post like this again. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
youdontknowtho 7y ago
I think this guy will be eating out on "getting shutdown for telling the truth" for years to come. Just looking at the kinds of things this guy has done on youtube, yeah...they are definitely in the whole "mainstream science is a conspiracy camp". The whole pyramids thing is hilarious...I can't remember who coined the term, but "pyramidiots" is my favorite.
raphlinus 7y ago
This reminds me of a person who somehow managed an invitation to give a presentation at UC Berkeley on database compression in 1993, with similar levels of snake-oil. I remember one of the funnier moments, a theme of the presentation was how there were more and more large data sets out there, including the Library of Congress. In a burst of enthusiasm, the presenter gushed about how they even had a Stradivarius violin in their collection. I turned to my friend and said, "well, I can imagine how to do data compression on that, but the decompression is going to be hard." The actual technology was just a variant of Lempel-Ziv, and the claims about lossless compression were just hiding the entropy by not counting a huge dictionary off to the side. Even so, there were claims that this result "extended information theory" and the patterns found could be the basis of learning. The presenter had climbed in their regional market, and gotten a puff piece in a business magazine, but obviously the grad students at UC Berkeley weren't buying it. The presenter's startup didn't go anywhere, but they have had a successful career, and are now a VP at Gartner. I guess the lesson is that there's a network that runs on technical expertise and ability to deliver results, and a parallel network that runs on bullshit and the ability to convince people. There's a lot of money and power in the second network, and it intersects with respected, established institutions. Grant seems to be playing that game masterfully, and the publicity from being publicly attacked at a "Black Hat" conference plays into his hands beautifully. Maybe Gartner will be hiring?
- mathattack 7y ago
  My experience with Gartner is similar to yours - much longer on slippery snake oil salespeople than content experts. They are supposedly a research org but what they produce looks copy and pasted from a 90s website.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  I read your comment up to the last paragraph and was going to comment about “VP at Gartner” and how these consulting companies (and Accenture, Deloitte, etc) run on bullshit but your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. I wonder what can be done to nuke these BS companies out of existence. Anyone has ideas?
  - 7y ago
kerng 7y ago
I find it not ideal from Blackhat to remove this talk. They paid to speak, so why not leave it at that. In many ways the guy hacked Blackhat with a few thousand dollars, which is kinda noteworthy. This guy certainly gets all the attention he wanted by Blackhat removing the video.
Uptrenda 7y ago
I'm getting an odd Wolf of wall street vibe from this. It's like the script were taken as inspiration for the branding. Crown sterling = Stratton Oakmont = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVMfGzXZP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVMfGzXZP8 Stratton's logo is a lion. Crown Sterlings logo is a lion. The style of presentation is the same: start with axioms that are hard to argue with. Use it to build trust, then when they're listening segway into the real bs. Building trust = https://youtu.be/dCANT0nG3bY?t=36 https://youtu.be/dCANT0nG3bY?t=36 "First we pitch them disney, at & T, ... blue chip stocks exclusively. companies these people know. once we've suckered them in we unload the dog shite. pink sheets, the penny stocks, where we make the money." They're doing the same thing but with encryption. Ofc, no one understands encryption directly so they talk abstractly about entropy and appeal to authority. After that comes the bs. The only part that seems missing from this is what they're shilling for and they're already gathering emails. Oops. I was going to say they missed the crucial ingredient which is to create FOMO -- or fear of missing out. But they got that right too by implying existing encryption was somehow flawed or broken. People would have to sign up or risk their 'data liberty.' Nicely done. I'll be surprised if this isn't to hype a blockchain-related project. IOTA 2.0.
mattxxx 7y ago
Reminds me of this music video: https://youtu.be/hKosaf5tmpI https://youtu.be/hKosaf5tmpI ... I can't imagine this being serious
whycombagator 7y ago
The holding/parent company[0] has lots of other interesting ventures [0] https://strathspeycrown.com/ https://strathspeycrown.com/
hannasanarion 7y ago
Did anybody catch an archive/mirror of the talk? I want to watch it for entertainment value
tptacek 7y ago
The funny thing about this is that everyone knew this talk was happening, and that it was going to be batshit; it was a hot Slack topic for a day a few weeks ago, and the day of the talk, people were excitedly talking about making to that talk so they could gape and heckle. I don't know precisely what happened to change this from comedy to controversy, but it definitely started with JP Aumasson's livetweet of the presentation going viral. So I guess I blame twitter.
wtdata 7y ago
For me, the best stream of Twitter comments about this is this one where the company claims that no Encryption algorithms are peer reviewed and then, several people working for legitimate companies tell them that's just bollocks: https://mobile.twitter.com/Robert_E_Grant_/status/1160226095481806848 https://mobile.twitter.com/Robert_E_Grant_/status/1160226095...
thesausageking 7y ago
Their intro video is really well-produced. If I had landed on it without any context, I would've thought it was a new Netflix show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Sometimes I think there should be a law that states products should be accurately described in advertisements. If such a law were enacted, this product might be called Fucked Up Encryption. I say that because the first law of encryption is that you don't roll it yourself. You can build things that use known encryption in non-standard ways, and even that can lead to things that were unexpected - like side channel attacks.

237 points by lnguyen 7y ago

naner 7y ago

Interesting move trying to push snake-oil in a room full of SMEs.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Yeah, selling snake-oil encryption to a group of professional infosec researchers and cryptographers? Do they even a have brain...
- emn13 7y ago
  I'm guessing there aren't all that many cryptographers at blackhat; that's quite a different specialty, isn't it? Then again, is also pays to know enough about cryptography to at least identify poorly applies crypto, so there are likely enough people in attendance with surprisingly in-depth knowledge even if crypto isn't technically their specialty.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    Yes, it was what I meant to say.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > I'm guessing there aren't all that many cryptographers at blackhat; that's quite a different specialty, isn't it? Well, it's not "quite a different specialty" in the same sense that zoology is quite a different specialty from what you would expect at Black Hat. There's some overlap between cryptography and Black Hat.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    You don't have to be a medical expert to recognize that a guy selling crystal-infused snake oil probably hasn't found the cure to cancer.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Thomas Pornin and JP Aumasson were at the talk, Thomas because he's crypto review board (along with a bunch of other cryptography people, many also in attendance) and JP because he spoke at the conference this year. We have a pretty strong cryptography program going on at Black Hat. I think we might be the best industry offensive crypto conference at this point.
- lordnacho 7y ago
  Maybe they just wanted to be able to say they spoke at BH and maybe a short clip to put on their site? Most bad or boring presentations are not called out publicly on several media.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Plenty of "security professionals" buy snake oil by the tanker full
sak5sk 7y ago
You don't need to be a cryptographer or even in the computer science field. One look at that hilarious promo video by any layman with any common sense is enough to see total bs that it is. I couldn't stomach to watch it all the way through.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  The only thing they missed in that video is a mention of "blockchain".

deleted 7y ago

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Chris_Chambers 7y ago

This site is absolute cancer on mobile. Their domain should be blacklisted from HN.

bigums 7y ago
Vice? Looks great on mine.
- ypcx 7y ago
  On desktop/chrome, it almost gave me a seizure, as the Twitter video element is "shaking" ever so slightly, and when scrolled more down, the rest of the page elements where shaking/vibrating too. Definitely altered my psyche, which is interesting.

jedberg 7y ago

I've always hated sponsored talks. I understand why they exist -- because they are huge money makers for the conference organizers. Occasionally, you get a good one, where it's a talk about a general topic that happens to have a light tie in with the commercial product. Or it's a very good commercial product that people want an in depth talk about. But usually, it's just a 30 minute ad that's all fluff. I try to avoid them, but sometimes I volunteer at conferences and get stuck managing a sponsored talk track, and man is it depressing.

jumelles 7y ago

> Usually, talks submitted to Black Hat go through a thorough approval process managed by a review board of industry experts. But, as in this case, companies can also pay to play and get these sponsored talks, which are not vetted for quality. That just seems ripe for abuse like this. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before.

mcpherrinm 7y ago
The main filter is the expense -- I don't see "sponsored talks" listed with a price-tag online, but I'd guess about USD $20000. There's plenty of boring, possibly snakeoil security products that get peddled every year. Usually they must have some foundation in reality to be able to pay Blackhat.
hannob 7y ago
Of course this has happened before. It's just usually nobody who has a clue cares about these sponsored talks. Do you think all the other products they pitch there live up to the promises made? This is just a bit extreme in its wording, so it's causing attention.

p1esk 7y ago

I also suspect the guy (Robert Grant) is a conman, but whatever scheme he is running is quite elaborate: https://strathspeycrown.com/team https://strathspeycrown.com/team Does anyone have an insight as to what their endgame is, and where their funding is coming from?

RL_Quine 7y ago
Having a team page like that is your first red flag. https://strathspeycrown.com/subsidiary-companies-investments/ https://strathspeycrown.com/subsidiary-companies-investments... > "Strathspey Crown is a visionary portfolio of transformational businesses, focused on the most complex sectors of healthcare, energy, and technology." This seems to be the parent company, check out some of the goofy things they claim to been involved in. Quotes like "changing the paradigm", "the internet of wellbeing", "where little things make a big difference". It's cookie cutter generic websites for every one of them, most of the time I can't work out what their product is supposed to be or what they're claiming to be working on.
- p1esk 7y ago
  But the interesting part is that at least some of the people involved in these companies seem real (e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/in/amira-val-baker-47047123/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/amira-val-baker-47047123/)
  - RL_Quine 7y ago
    One of the products seems to be real and FDA approved. https://www.drugs.com/newdrugs/fda-approves-jeuveau-prabotulinumtoxina-xvfs-temporary-improvement-appearance-frown-lines-4911.html https://www.drugs.com/newdrugs/fda-approves-jeuveau-prabotul...
    - elliekelly 7y ago
      I don’t understand what it supposedly does that’s any different/better than Botox?

jlgaddis 7y ago

The company has issued a "statement regarding recent allegations made at Black Hat 2019 [0]. For anyone interested, the statement links to the guy's paper [1] "where he identified the first Infinite Prime Number prediction pattern". > Utilizing multi-dimensional encryption technology, including time, music’s infinite variability, artificial intelligence, and most notably mathematical constancies to generate entangled key pairs, ... I'm not even remotely qualified to speak about any of it but it certainly gives the feeling that they're selling "silicon snake oil". My bullshit detector hit 11 after reading the above. Supposedly, Grant's discovery enables "the accurate prediction of prime numbers". I'm unable to find out just how many previously unknown prime numbers he has successfully predicted thus far, however. Anyone know? [0]: https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/08/crown-sterling-issues-statement-regarding-recent-allegations-made-at-black-hat-2019/ https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/08/crown-sterling-issues-s... [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.08570 https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.08570

RL_Quine 7y ago
> Well, I did allude to a draft preprint of some arguments that point out the major issues with Grant's paper he is presenting at @BlackHatEvents. Here is that draft: Reviewing Recent Prime Generation Methods for Breaking Cryptographic Keys https://twitter.com/LargeCardinal/status/1159204973282025472 https://twitter.com/LargeCardinal/status/1159204973282025472 https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Breaking_Crypto-5e.pdf https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Bre...
- dmix 7y ago
  So it sounds like the people in attendance who challenged it live were aware of it beforehand and showed up to call him out? The linked Twitter post saying "Sad to see such charlatans given a stage at Black Hat" was on August 2nd. Edit: and a paper critiquing the math was published July 2019: https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Breaking_Crypto-5e.pdf https://unprovable.github.io/drafts/Prime_Generation_For_Bre...
  - chmod775 7y ago

Animats 7y ago

Why did Black Hat delete it, rather than making snide comments about it? A video of people laughing at the speaker would have been great.

jlgaddis 7y ago
The speaker('s company) paid a hefty price for him to be there to present. Black Hat doesn't wanna dissuade any other potential vendors from not giving them their money.
- Twisol 7y ago
  I feel like you could make the same case for not loudly renouncing "Time AI". If Black Hat were to stand by this sponsor, I would wonder if other potential sponsors might actively withhold funds specifically to avoid being associated with "Time AI". Like the YouTube adpocalypse -- the media storm around certain kinds of content made advertisers uncomfortable with being associated with that content.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Well part of the point with sponsors is to find someone that can make money without 'selling out' and doing major damage to themselves as a conference brand. "Time AI" isn't paying nearly enough money to be worth the damage that not renouncing them would do.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  I think dissuading these sorts of people would be a win for everybody, at least it puts the bar a little higher for the next company who is buying themselves a spot.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Black Hat publicly disavowed the talk. Tell us more about what Black Hat does and doesn't want to do?
  - 7y ago

stebann 7y ago

When several companies like this one look related and are trying to push some of their "products" into a pro market, it really smells like a money laundering scheme. I have seen schemes like this one in South-America, Brazil specifically, related to "religious" indoctrination. Hope someone in USA investigates this. It looks well funded.

H8crilA 7y ago

Here's a full portfolio of snake oil "companies" that these guys (or this guy?) engage in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paZWjiJIk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paZWjiJIk8

dguido 7y ago

There's an article from PC Mag with a few more details: https://www.pcmag.com/news/370119/black-hat-attendees-sponsored-session-was-snake-oil-crypto https://www.pcmag.com/news/370119/black-hat-attendees-sponso... Here's a video of Robert Grant giving an introduction to his Time AI nonsense from their party the night before: https://www.dropbox.com/s/llp24loq5odvyhk/Crown%20Sterling%20CEO%20-%20BH%2008.07.19.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/llp24loq5odvyhk/Crown%20Sterling%2... JP Aumasson live tweeted their presentation at Blackhat: https://twitter.com/veorq/status/1159559785068429312 https://twitter.com/veorq/status/1159559785068429312

tastroder 7y ago
Do I understand those Twitter threads correctly in that BH security removed you from the room? The heck?
- dguido 7y ago
  Yes, and it makes sense that I was thrown out. It's not like the security guard knows the talk is bullshit. He just saw a guy (me) yelling that, "all you employees of this guy should quit and find real jobs!" I think that was an appropriate response in the moment. The true failure happened when Blackhat decided it was ok to accept money from a con man.
  - tastroder 7y ago
    Fair enough, I naively assumed that security at BH had people embedded that would be able to make that call. But yeah, agree on all fronts then, thanks for standing up to him.

lordnacho 7y ago

Snake oil for sure, but this is merely a snake oil sales guy who walked into a room full of people willing to call him out. The rest of society is not so courageous. You only need to look at various management consultants, new age healers, and religion to find more people who obviously know nothing about how the world actually is, but are never held to account.

friendlybus 7y ago
>and religion Going to disagree with you there, you would know this guy is deliberately being manipulative with symbolism if you took understanding from religious art. He's just compressed several parts of the collective unconscious into one video without meaning for whatever dumb reason. Time is growing more important than space, that'll be building up to 2024. The big slow interstellar style "bwooah"s have stopped and more of the billie eillish fast paced music will build up to 2024. EDIT: anyone want to reply as well as downvote?
- uryga 7y ago
  > Time is growing more important than space, that'll be building up to 2024. that part makes you sound a bit crank-ish... could you explain this a bit more? what's happening in 2024?
- _0ffh 7y ago
  I didn't downvote, but only because I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.
- extropy 7y ago
  You are impyling my bullshit detector needs "regligious art" class. Without explaining in laymans terms, you implicitly position yourself being "smarter than me" and I should be understanding what you say or go learn about it. I'm fine as it is, thank you.
djsumdog 7y ago
Black Hat is like a $2k ~ $3k conference. Even though many people there are sponsored by their companies, it's still expensive and I suspect people who put this kind of value in this conference aren't going to sit around and put up with what they know is bullshit.

ian0 7y ago

Sure it's not documentary makers seeing how far they can take it? This looks like a piss-take.

jaynetics 7y ago
the team page supports your point ( https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/05/alan-green/ https://www.crownsterling.io/2019/05/alan-green/ ): "Alan [...] dedicated the last fifteen years to decrypting mathematical codes in Shakespeare’s writings that have revealed unknown sacred geometry hidden in the pyramids of Giza." i don't think anyone will invest so much time into such a bungled attempt of con-artistry, so this does look more like a (costly) hoax. maybe it is intended to discredit certain players in SecOps, Sokal-affair-style ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair ).
- jowsie 7y ago
  It's more likely to be along the same lines as the Nigerian Prince scam emails. They look absolutely ridiculous to anyone with the slightest ability to critically think about the situation. Those aren't the people they're targeting, though.
  - jaynetics 7y ago
    even in the Nigerian prince mails they don't go out of their way to give the prince a biography that could have been written by Erich von Däniken.

mansilladev 7y ago

Perhaps he’s from the future. But I’d guess he’d say, “Only _time_ will tell.”

youdontknowtho 7y ago
Upvoted for more dad jokes on HN.
- mansilladev 7y ago
  Yeah, tough crowd. Pulled the quote right from that promo reel.

jacquesm 7y ago

Giving a sponsored talk at a conference that attracts a lot of experts in the field is an interesting attempt at hacking, had they gotten away with it they would have had that much more bragging rights while trying to land investor money. Outright scams are pretty rare but I've come across them a couple of times in the last decade, it always amazes me that investors would even begin to consider them.

tastroder 7y ago
In an era of kickstarter scams I'm not sure that there's that much of a difference between this and "getting away with it". I get that vetting sponsored talks is hard from a BH perspective but... just looking at how the presenter downplays this in their twitter responses, I'm pretty sure they'll use it for bragging rights anyway. Just like they apparently claim to have published something with an arxiv paper. It is pretty doubtful that anybody will remember this incident in a month when they pitch it to a non-technical crowd, worst case for them is using a slightly different name to avoid superficial search engine due diligence.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  They might even use the 'Secrets that Black Hat does not want you to know' angle to their advantage.
seren 7y ago
It reminds me of the Steorn / Orbo free energy machine. They were so confident they bought a whole page ad in the Economist and setup a public demo of their device. At some point, you don't know if they are scammers or if they have deluded themselves so hard they believe it.

1023bytes 7y ago

One of their sister companies actually sells healing crystals: https://arkcrystals.com/ https://arkcrystals.com/

chvid 7y ago
"Replicating the magnetohydrodynamics naturally occurring in a variety of astrophysical objects, which couples plasma modes to the harmonic structure of the quantum vacuum — the Harmonic Flux Resonator (HFR) replicates and transfers quantum energy." ... it says on the website and then it links on to a website which offers energy derived from vacuum: Vacuum Energy Energy extracted directly from the vacuum. Nothing to burn, nothing to consume, nothing to destroy. No fumes, no toxins, no limitations. Nothing short of a paradigm shift which will alter the course of human kind forever. https://torustech.com/technology/ https://torustech.com/technology/ Is it one of those websites that is really marketing for a new sci-fi show?
- jotm 7y ago
  > Energy extracted directly from the vacuum. Nothing to burn, nothing to consume, nothing to destroy. No fumes, no toxins, no limitations. So, it is nothing. Shieeet I wish I could sell nothing to people for money.
  - chvid 7y ago
    It is a free energy machine / perpetual motion machine. That is always good if you are tech investor to have that sort of thing in your portfolio :-D
- GordonS 7y ago
  > the Harmonic Flux Resonator That's hilarious, I'd swear I've heard that on Star Trek Next Generation an age ago!
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    Wasn't that the thing that powered the DeLorean in Back to the Future?

rv-de 7y ago

https://www.robertedwardgrant.com/about https://www.robertedwardgrant.com/about That's Robert Grant's personal website. Check it out. It's hilarious.

elliekelly 7y ago
> He was formerly CEO and President of Bausch and Lomb Surgical in June of 2010. So he was in the position for... one month? Am I reading that correctly?
- rficcaglia 7y ago
  From this it seems he was there at least until 2011: https://news.chapman.edu/2011/05/16/jerry-lewis-among-commencement-speakers/ https://news.chapman.edu/2011/05/16/jerry-lewis-among-commen... PR when he was appointed in 2010: https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/bausch-and-lomb-names-b-robert-e-grant-b-as-ceo-and-president-of-its-surgical-business-/ https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/bausch-and-lomb-na... Clearly the guy made a fortune from Botox, knows how to leverage that success and build an organization around buzzwords that attract investor money. To be fair, is that any worse than Silicon Valley VC?
_0ffh 7y ago
He's linked a TEDx talk of his. Kinda figures. I suppose he couldn't tell the difference between that and a proper conference.
- hobofan 7y ago
  > I suppose he couldn't tell the difference between that and a proper conference. Most people can't. At this point I've basically given up on trying to correct people that call TEDx talks TED talks.
  - rv-de 7y ago
    there are good TEDx talks though and also several pretty low quality TED talks.

misnome 7y ago

I have somewhat sympathy for Black Hat, especially with the "pay for talks" model that they seem to get funding from, it's easy for these things to get a platform. I went to a maker space in the UK that occasionally held talks - one day they had a talk by some "Alkaline water" machine manufacturer (not the manufacturer, but one of the pyramid scheme dupes). Like many of these, it was a random mix of diverse actual (irrelevant) science, pseudoscience bullshit, conspiracy theory (as to why this wasn't e.g. used in medicine), appeal to authority and outright fraud, gish-galloped together into one giant mess. The diversity of the actual science means that there is _nobody_ who can be an expert in all areas and so refuting can be waved away. Many of the otherwise practically intelligent people (although a wide mix came to this space) apparently couldn't tell or didn't care. Several people actually bought machines from them. I suppose all of this is (in these contexts) is preying on the tendency for competent scientists to automatically question their own assumptions, but even when they do most of the time it just feeds their "controversy" argument using people who would never have bought it anyway. Con-artists continue to thrive for a reason; even with the canniest/most suspicious people there's an arbitrage on how long they can survive in one place before moving onto the next target.

liability 7y ago
> diversity of the actual science means that there is _nobody_ who can be an expert in all areas and so refuting can be waved away. No, you just overthought it. Consider Diogenes' refutation of Zeno's motion paradoxes. Did he invent calculus? No, he stood up and walked around. If somebody tries to sell you a magical medicine water alkalizer machine, just throw alkaseltzer tablets at their face until they fuck off. That's all the refutation that's needed. A technical 'rigorous' refutation wouldn't be understood by the rubes such con men target anyway.
0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
I don’t have any sympathy, but this isn’t really that big of a deal. Black hat is expensive as fuck and they could have done without the money. I think they do less than DEFCON while also charging more but that’s just my hot take. I don’t think they’ll suffer any practical reputation damage (like people choosing NOT to go to Black hat). It’ll just be a meme and something they laugh about.

Ice_cream_suit 7y ago

"The author will show that when applying this simple operation to magical numbers, and to many other groups of numbers, an amazing world of hidden interconnections; repetition cycles; numerical symmetries; and geometrical patterns emerge. Especially when the geometrical (the circle) and the numerical aspects of the digital root world are combined together. It is in this circular/numerical world where numbers, individually and collectively, exist in their most basic, yet perfect and symmetrical states, and where the basic nine numbers are differentiated into three groups of amazing properties, which will be shown to underlie the essence of the whole universe; from the atom and its forces to the solar system and its geometry." Right....

lucb1e 7y ago

I don't get why we give this so much attention. The authors are clearly kidding, mentally ill, or have a purpose beyond my understanding (this can't be the easiest way to launder money).

andrepd 7y ago
The purpose is to make money selling snake oil, not anything more complicated than that.
mruts 7y ago
The founder is Mormon. This is how (from experience) Mormons talk. They also love talking about Da Vinci, Greek philosophers, and the founding fathers. Mix in numerology, lots of crying, and you get your typical Mormon.
smacktoward 7y ago
It would be fun if this turned out to be a Sokal-style prank to illustrate the reputational risks to conferences of accepting sponsored talks.
dguido 7y ago
This kind of attention is great for us, bad for him. Now there's a PC Mag, Vice, and Gizmodo article indexed high up on Google when you search Time AI that debunks him.
p1esk 7y ago
purpose beyond my understanding Depending on the purpose, this might need more attention.

0XAFFE 7y ago

Reminds me a bit of https://timecube.2enp.com/ https://timecube.2enp.com/

youdontknowtho 7y ago
It's like TimeCube guy had wealthy parents or something like that.

thatguy27 7y ago

Did anyone back up the video before it got taken down?

mruts 7y ago

Here's a instagram post from the founder: https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/vp/1ba57134a58455de0595824423feaf0c/5DEB85B3/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/p640x640/66697542_482125555666888_8950706368114846991_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent.cdninstagram.com https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/vp/1ba57134a58455de0595824... Also look at his papers. He likes to draw a lot instead of doing math.

youdontknowtho 7y ago
It reminds me of the "math stuff" from Aronofsky's movie "PI"...with the exception that I enjoyed "PI".
ghthor 7y ago
You're an asshole. Geometric relationships between numbers are doing math.
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't post like this again. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

youdontknowtho 7y ago

I think this guy will be eating out on "getting shutdown for telling the truth" for years to come. Just looking at the kinds of things this guy has done on youtube, yeah...they are definitely in the whole "mainstream science is a conspiracy camp". The whole pyramids thing is hilarious...I can't remember who coined the term, but "pyramidiots" is my favorite.

raphlinus 7y ago

This reminds me of a person who somehow managed an invitation to give a presentation at UC Berkeley on database compression in 1993, with similar levels of snake-oil. I remember one of the funnier moments, a theme of the presentation was how there were more and more large data sets out there, including the Library of Congress. In a burst of enthusiasm, the presenter gushed about how they even had a Stradivarius violin in their collection. I turned to my friend and said, "well, I can imagine how to do data compression on that, but the decompression is going to be hard." The actual technology was just a variant of Lempel-Ziv, and the claims about lossless compression were just hiding the entropy by not counting a huge dictionary off to the side. Even so, there were claims that this result "extended information theory" and the patterns found could be the basis of learning. The presenter had climbed in their regional market, and gotten a puff piece in a business magazine, but obviously the grad students at UC Berkeley weren't buying it. The presenter's startup didn't go anywhere, but they have had a successful career, and are now a VP at Gartner. I guess the lesson is that there's a network that runs on technical expertise and ability to deliver results, and a parallel network that runs on bullshit and the ability to convince people. There's a lot of money and power in the second network, and it intersects with respected, established institutions. Grant seems to be playing that game masterfully, and the publicity from being publicly attacked at a "Black Hat" conference plays into his hands beautifully. Maybe Gartner will be hiring?

mathattack 7y ago
My experience with Gartner is similar to yours - much longer on slippery snake oil salespeople than content experts. They are supposedly a research org but what they produce looks copy and pasted from a 90s website.
Nextgrid 7y ago
I read your comment up to the last paragraph and was going to comment about “VP at Gartner” and how these consulting companies (and Accenture, Deloitte, etc) run on bullshit but your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. I wonder what can be done to nuke these BS companies out of existence. Anyone has ideas?
- 7y ago

kerng 7y ago

I find it not ideal from Blackhat to remove this talk. They paid to speak, so why not leave it at that. In many ways the guy hacked Blackhat with a few thousand dollars, which is kinda noteworthy. This guy certainly gets all the attention he wanted by Blackhat removing the video.

Uptrenda 7y ago

I'm getting an odd Wolf of wall street vibe from this. It's like the script were taken as inspiration for the branding. Crown sterling = Stratton Oakmont = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVMfGzXZP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVMfGzXZP8 Stratton's logo is a lion. Crown Sterlings logo is a lion. The style of presentation is the same: start with axioms that are hard to argue with. Use it to build trust, then when they're listening segway into the real bs. Building trust = https://youtu.be/dCANT0nG3bY?t=36 https://youtu.be/dCANT0nG3bY?t=36 "First we pitch them disney, at & T, ... blue chip stocks exclusively. companies these people know. once we've suckered them in we unload the dog shite. pink sheets, the penny stocks, where we make the money." They're doing the same thing but with encryption. Ofc, no one understands encryption directly so they talk abstractly about entropy and appeal to authority. After that comes the bs. The only part that seems missing from this is what they're shilling for and they're already gathering emails. Oops. I was going to say they missed the crucial ingredient which is to create FOMO -- or fear of missing out. But they got that right too by implying existing encryption was somehow flawed or broken. People would have to sign up or risk their 'data liberty.' Nicely done. I'll be surprised if this isn't to hype a blockchain-related project. IOTA 2.0.

mattxxx 7y ago

Reminds me of this music video: https://youtu.be/hKosaf5tmpI https://youtu.be/hKosaf5tmpI ... I can't imagine this being serious

whycombagator 7y ago

The holding/parent company[0] has lots of other interesting ventures [0] https://strathspeycrown.com/ https://strathspeycrown.com/

hannasanarion 7y ago

Did anybody catch an archive/mirror of the talk? I want to watch it for entertainment value

tptacek 7y ago

The funny thing about this is that everyone knew this talk was happening, and that it was going to be batshit; it was a hot Slack topic for a day a few weeks ago, and the day of the talk, people were excitedly talking about making to that talk so they could gape and heckle. I don't know precisely what happened to change this from comedy to controversy, but it definitely started with JP Aumasson's livetweet of the presentation going viral. So I guess I blame twitter.

wtdata 7y ago

For me, the best stream of Twitter comments about this is this one where the company claims that no Encryption algorithms are peer reviewed and then, several people working for legitimate companies tell them that's just bollocks: https://mobile.twitter.com/Robert_E_Grant_/status/1160226095481806848 https://mobile.twitter.com/Robert_E_Grant_/status/1160226095...

thesausageking 7y ago

Their intro video is really well-produced. If I had landed on it without any context, I would've thought it was a new Netflix show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_2HwAmge8

not_a_cop75 7y ago

Sometimes I think there should be a law that states products should be accurately described in advertisements. If such a law were enacted, this product might be called Fucked Up Encryption. I say that because the first law of encryption is that you don't roll it yourself. You can build things that use known encryption in non-standard ways, and even that can lead to things that were unexpected - like side channel attacks.