The Crazy !&*#? World of Crypto

Don’t overclaim, unless you really have the evidence

It is not often that you hear:

“Get off the stage … you shouldn’t be here! Black Hat are going to take all this down”

at research presentation [here]. If you are a PhD researcher that will be giving your first research presentation soon, perhaps don’t view the video from social media.

Preface

Please excuse me here for explaining the world of academic research. We have a process of peer review, and it is there to guard against those who may make fault claims. It also protects those who are new to the field from over claiming the significance of something. So, just because I tell the world that I have broken elliptic curve cryptography in a news item and that no-ones data is safe any more, doesn’t actually mean it’s true. There are thus certain processes that are involved in research that you have to follow, and, as you will see, the TIME AI paper presented at Black Hat 2019 is perhaps stepping over a line.

Waking up to a new threat

Well. In cryptography, you just know that someday you will wake up, and someone will have found a new way of doing something and that the world is…