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

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

#141

Post by 1e-9 »

jlgaddis wrote: post #28
p1esk wrote: post #9

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

I don't have a link handy but I came across a statement on their website earlier mentioning that they are mostly funded by doctors.

Their press release about prime numbers suggests that they are trying to convince doctors to invest. From https://strathspeycrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SC_Pr...:

> "The firm's subsidiaries and investors include board certified physician specialists across key medical specialties, including plastic surgery, ophthalmology, dermatology, dentistry and orthopedics. Strathspey Crown is focused on working with physician investors to bring to market innovative technologies and services in the self-pay sector of the lifestyle healthcare market."

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

#142

Post by jacquesm »

tastroder wrote: post #62
jacquesm wrote: post #46

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.

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 p…

They might even use the 'Secrets that Black Hat does not want you to know' angle to their advantage.

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

#143

Post by rv-de »

hobofan wrote: post #126
_0ffh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's linked a TEDx talk of his. Kinda figures. I suppose he couldn't tell the difference between that and a proper conference.

> 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.

there are good TEDx talks though and also several pretty low quality TED talks.

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

#144

Post by tptacek »

emn13 wrote: post #19
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, selling snake-oil encryption to a group of professional infosec researchers and cryptographers? Do they even a have brain...

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.

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.

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

#145

Post by tptacek »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #133
misnome wrote: post #53

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 (i…

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.

They're different events. For a lot of offensive security subjects, the bar to get a talk accepted at Black Hat is significantly higher than at Defcon. Black Hat has a clear professional focus; Defcon tacks more towards culture and enthusiasts.

If you don't want to pay for Black Hat, you don't have to; one of the things Black Hat's registration price covers is professional recording, and the talks are published on Youtube in a few months.

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

#146

Post by mathattack »

raphlinus wrote: post #116

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 violi…

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.

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

#147

Post by baby »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #133
misnome wrote: post #53

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 (i…

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.

Don’t forget that blackhat pays its speakers.

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

#148

Post by tptacek »

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.

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

#149

Post by Nextgrid »

raphlinus wrote: post #116

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 violi…

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?

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

#150

Post by mcguire »

raphlinus wrote: post #116

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 violi…

I'm not sure the division is that strong. Years ago, I repeatedly saw a talk from a wellish known academic about "compressed" SMS messages that were simply a prearranged code. This was shortly before text messages became very cheap, wireless networking became much more common, and phone processors were in the process of becoming much more powerful.

Then there was the professor pushing their "Lego" model of network protocol development, whose example was encryption and compression blocks.

There's less money in academia, but just as much publicity.

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