Công Ty Crypto 'Dầu Rắn' Được Cho Là Ký Tố Đòn Ở Hội Nghị Black Hat

Một trong những khoảnh khắc kỳ lạ nhất tại hội nghị bảo mật Black Hat USA ở Las Vegas trong tháng này đã trở thành đề tài của một vụ kiện liên bang chống lại hội nghị.

Trong một đơn tới Tòa án Quận Hoa Kỳ cho Quận Nam New York (PDF), các luật sư đại diện cho công ty "mật mã số học số nổi bật" Crown Sterling cáo buộc Black Hat USA đã vi phạm "hợp đồng tài trợ với Crown Sterling và các cam kết ngầm hiệu quả từ đó." Crown Sterling tiếp tục buộc tội các nhà tổ chức hội nghị có "hành vi sai trái khác" liên quan đến sự kiện xung quanh việc trình bày một bài báo của CEO và người sáng lập Crown Sterling, Robert E. Grant. Ngoài việc tố cáo hội nghị, Crown Sterling cũng đã kiện 10 bị cáo 'Doe', họ được cho là đã tổ chức làm gián đoạn bài nói tài trợ của công ty tại 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.

Prime numbers are important in public-key encryption because most encryption algorithms depend on the use of primes to create pseudorandom "semiprimes"—numbers with exactly two prime factors. Large semiprimes used in the RSA 2048-bit algorithm are so difficult to factor that no computer, quantum or digital, has yet been able to crack the primes they are made from to extract the keys. Grant and Ghannam's paper suggests that their method could quickly find the primes in question and essentially break RSA-2048 and any other semiprime-based encryption. Crown Sterling's answer to this potential crisis in encryption, called TIME AI, is something the company calls "five-dimensional" encryption, "the world's first 'non-factor' based quantum AI encryption" based on polygons, AI-composed music, Fibonacci's sequence, and various other things.

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.

In a release after the event, Crown Sterling issued the following statement:

Some allegations were made at Black Hat 2019 claiming that Grant’s presentation included misrepresentations and erroneous claims. “Crown Sterling has announced a legitimate multi-dimensional encryption technology that challenges the paradigm of today’s encryption framework. We understand that the discovery completely transforms the way we secure data and that some members of the security industry are resistant to change or accepting of new technologies that do not conform to traditional approaches,” said Grant. “We completely stand behind all content presented at Black Hat 2019 and we look forward to presenting further developments about the company and our quantum AI encryption technology.”

But the buzz from the presentation was so bad that Crown Sterling is now suing Black Hat for not upholding its standards of conduct for attendees and for violating the terms of Crown Sterling's "sponsorship package"—the thing that allowed Grant to present at Black Hat in the first place—by allowing "a premeditated, orchestrated attack on [Crown Sterling], staged by certain industry detractors and competitors." As the company's lawyers assert in their filing, Crown Sterling believes this was in violation of the "gold" level sponsorship the company and its backers purchased to get a slot at the conference:

In purchasing the highest (“gold”) sponsorship package, Crown Sterling went all in to support the Black Hat conference, trusting that Black Hat USA reasonably would stand by its high standards. But it did not. Rather than treat Crown Sterling with the respect due any participant or member of the public attending the Black Hat conference, Black Hat USA looked the other way when a small group of detractors staged a coordinated harassment of Crown Sterling’s scheduled talk, which was part of its sponsorship package.

Update, 8/23/19 2:45pm ET: A spokesperson for UBM, the company that produces Black Hat, told Ars, "We are aware of the press release stating that a complaint has been filed and have no further comment at this time."

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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