How a custom virus caught a liar.

I don’t remember the names. It was sometime in the late nineties when I received a phone call from an ex-girlfriend who worked for a military contractor. She said she was sort of on the rebound from a relationship, but needed my assistance with a “computer issue.” I drove for over five hours to get to her house. Here I find that she’s cohabitating with her current “boyfriend,” but they are separated momentarily; and they also have another roommate, a girl, who she wanted to introduce to me. He was a computer science major, if I recall correctly, which is why she needed some “training to teach him a lesson”; rather unintentionally she was provided with a method of making a self replicating virus.

When I arrived we went out to dinner with her roommates to a local sports bar. We had a good time until someone started hitting the sauce. After we returned to the house, she pulled me aside and explained the issue: her ex, or soon to be ex- or whatever his status was at the time, had allegedly been looking at pornographic material on his computer. I didn't think this was a crime, but they had an agreement that he was not to look for pornography because apparently it had been an issue in her last relationship to the point that it haunted her. Her other roommate had heard him, clued her in, and when confronted, he lied in response about looking at it; and so she wanted to prove he was lying, but didn’t know how. She didn’t know where to look, and was afraid that any attempt for her to show him would backfire as he could say it wasn’t his, too many roommates. It was sort of a communal terminal.

I felt sorry for her, so rather reluctantly, I decided to enable her to prove, rather embarrass him with, evidence that he’d been looking at the things he was not supposed to be. Had he not been a jerk most of the evening (mean drunk), I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved, but at the time I still had weekends, so it was a mini-holiday.

For the record, I never touched his computer, and never touched her computer. I simply conveyed to her, a computer science major at the time, in theory how to write a couple of scripts that could modify the Windows auto-execute batch file to make something that worked like a virus, on her computer; theoretical stuff really.

First I explained to her that she needed to not touch the computer. If it at all seemed like she had any time with the machine, then the game would be up. I theorized on how she could write a little batch file that would write another batch file and clean up after itself. This other batch file could scour the Temporary Internet Items directory for video files and porn-sounding jpg names. Any files it located could then be copied to a new hidden directory of some obscure name, completely random even. The file extensions could then be changed, so they would not look like videos if someone were to do a search for videos on the hard drive, this way the batch could replicate them again into the startup and IE temporary items folder, by searching for their new unique extensions upon restart.

After searching for the files and copying them to their new location, the system would then, in theory, copy them to the startup folder in the start menu; then the batch file could patch the Windows registry runonce menu to trigger a new instance of itself, just in case the batch wasn’t called on the next restart.

The poor guy was using Windows 95 without service packs.

Upon loading Windows, a little snippet could be placed about 1000 lines down in the autoexec.bat file. If this sort of script was able to install itself from a floppy on insertion (not really a batch file, but something like autorun.inf), it would be much more detrimental of course. So in theory, all someone had to do was pop in the floppy, let Windows access the  disk, then they could eject it. Smeary fingerprint on the eject button would be the only indication of tampering, if someone tried to determine an origin.

The next day, after having me sleep on the floor in her room to further boil the poor guy’s blood, we spent the morning watching television in the main room snickering about my theories. He was hung over; his computer was in the hallway, waiting. When he came back from the gym he turned his computer on. My friend walked down the hallway and popped a floppy into the drive after he had booted the machine up. She then asked "are you going to use your computer," to which he said, "You've had all morning to use it, I just turned it on, so yeah, I'm going to use it." She promptly removed disk and turned the volume all the way up on the guy’s Labtec speakers. All of this happened with him watching, but nothing suspicious. The computer had become a dynamic of control in their arrangement.

About 30 minutes later he comes over to the computer and reboots it; it had locked up; no service pack was installed, it was poorly maintained, that sort of thing. Five minutes later we hear this blaring cacophony of multiple moans and grunts overlapping with the soundtracks of roughly 10 adult videos featuring who knows what, all playing simultaneously. Windows was nice enough to tile their display when the system started; we could see it from the couch, raunchy stuff.

Leaning back in his metal folding chair, he slams his chair forward and turns off the speakers. “What are you watching hon?” she says from the living room, the guy’s face is beet red. He closes all of the windows with alt-f4 repeatedly before she makes it down the hallway to “get a drink” from the kitchen. Then he proceeds to delete all of the items from his startup folder. He looks at me, he was about twice my size and I was 220lbs at the time, and says, “You had better not touch my computer again.” I told him I hadn’t touched it, and that he probably had a virus from looking at porn sites. I gave a plausible response and told the truth, having not touched his machine, omitted a couple of details, but didn't lie, technically.

About 30 minutes later he restarted his computer. Surprisingly the same thing happens again. He looks at me and says “what did you do?” I truthfully said “I haven’t touched your computer man,” with one of those smirks to make him wonder. He calls his friend, The Computer Guru.

This guy shows up, he walks over to the computer, looks back at me and glares. I don’t know what her boyfriend at the time knew about me, but whatever it was, he had his suspicions about what he didn’t know after that day. The computer guru guy goes in and deletes all of the IE history and temp internet items. Then deletes the items in the startup folder. “Watch this though,” her boyfriend says, as he reboots the computer. Same thing happens again. Computer guru goes in and removes all of the items as before, and this time does a search for videos, finds nothing oddly enough. He restarts the computer. Same thing happens again. Then he restarts it again, problem is compounded because there was no theoretical statement to check for existing video and picture files. He tells her boyfriend, “don’t reboot it again, I’ll be back.”

Enter Windows 95 for Dummies

The computer guru guy shows up with his tattered copy of Windows 95 for Dummies in-hand and a box of 3.5in floppies containing antivirus and Norton disk utilities; I always wondered why that book was so popular. He boots from a floppy, runs chkdsk, tells the guy he’s searching for hard drive errors that could cause the system to not be deleting the items from the temporary internet items folder, I'm off the hook at this point, so they relax around me. He also runs defrag. An hour goes by. Her, her other roommate, and myself go to the bookstore, hang for an hour, then we come back. They’re still at it. “I don’t know man, we’ve done everything I can think of.” the guru says. He pops in the Windows 95 recovery disk, rebuilds the system to factory defaults, without reformatting. This defiles the registry. Windows loads for the first time after the reinstall, videos all still in place. Mad, he throws the keyboard.

They reformat.

2 hours later, “where did all of my files go?” the boyfriend says. “I told you I was reformatting,” replies the guru. He looks at my friend “got any spare floppies?” She replies, “Yeah I’ve got one.” Brings him the disk. I grinned, gave her a hug, told her she was evil, and promptly left. The next week she calls me to tell me that he bought another computer, Windows 98 this time, and "geez, if it didn’t develop the same sort of characteristics a couple of days after he bought it." Poor guy... if only he hadn't lied to her.

So I've been thinking to myself, ethically, was it wrong to help her? Knowledge in the wrong hands... I'm glad I was on her good side.

A lack of Infosec in the home buying process.

I often get a little edgy when people who are dealing with personal information throw around the word “secure.” Also when they say something is “100% safe” it tends to grate me as well. Nothing is secure. We’ve been trying to buy a house and during this process of applying for a mortgage and verifying income with lenders at multiple banks, it’s been a few months, I’ve noticed a few leaks or weak links in the chain of info that unnerve me in terms of my personal information security.

When we first started the process, the mortgage company asked for the usual: bank statements, tax returns, year-to-date profit-and-loss statements, IDs, and check stubs, everything to verify that we can afford the house we’re trying to buy. When I asked how do you want us to provide this information to you, their initial response was “e-mail.”

E-mail is NOT SAFE

Had the person I’m dealing with read their own email disclaimer that goes out on every email they send, they would have noticed that it states:

“Do not use email to send us confidential information such as credit card numbers, PIN numbers, passwords, Social Security Numbers, Account numbers, or other important and confidential information.”

If you don’t want anyone to find out something, you definitely don’t send it through e-mail. There are typically at a minimum, 4 copies of an e-mail created for every message sent... sometimes 6.

1. When you send the e-mail a copy is likely stored in your sent items folder, locally cached. Anyone can open this if they get ahold of your e-mail account, either by system compromise on your own terminal, but guessing your password and breaching your e-mail service provider’s system, or by getting into your e-mail through your mobile device (if you have your e-mail setup on the device). This also includes any other devices that have a copy of the e-mail or access to something like a IMAP server.
2. The Internet is not a series of pipes. Connections to servers can take several different routes depending on the network load. In fact when you connect to your mail server, if it is offsite, there are multiple nodes on the network between your computer and the mail server itself that are rarely consistent. These nodes are not always "secure." Then the email travels from your mail server, hopefully after authentication, to your recipient’s mail server (between their networks), when it can then be stored and downloaded by your recipient to multiple devices wherever they are downloading the message. Work, Coffee Shops, Non-secure home networks, and schools on computers, tablets, Internet mail accounts, and cell phones.
3. Not all e-mail uses SSL or TLS to connect. Some e-mail connections transmit e-mail information from point-to-point in clear text often referred to as plain text. This means anyone listening can read every word.
4. PDF files are not inherently secure even though they require a special program to open them. While you can encrypt a PDF file by requiring a password, this is not the default. Go onto Google and do a search for any term followed by the text “filetype:pdf” and you will see thousands of results from clear text or plain text PDF files. Google knows what is in these files because their servers automatically read the PDFs and in some cases they will optically recognize the contents of the PDF to make a text version.
5. If you provide a password to someone for the PDF, don’t send it in the same message with the PDF. In fact if you can send it a different way, either via text message or tell someone over the phone, you’re even better off. Then hope they don’t forward the message with the password to someone else, or worse decrypt the message and then forward it (as was done in our case by a county worker).

People still use fax machines?

In the `90s, fax machines were physical machines. While they might have had a buffer where a user could reprint faxes, they were essentially a modem hooked to a copy machine. You hit send and it scanned the image and sent a really low quality version over the phone line directly to another fax machine where it was almost immediately printed.

If the physical security of the fax machine was okay, you didn’t have to worry about someone tampering with the information. If the fax was sent to the wrong number, then all bets were off.

Today, fax machines are entirely different, sometimes they’re actually copy machines with a built-in computer and a hard drive. These messages can stay on these machines for a very long time. If the machines don’t have a custom password, meaning they use the default password, many of the faxes can be retrieved from the machines remotely if someone is savvy enough to go online and look for the manual for the machine itself.

If the fax machine is one of the new cheap all-in-one faxes that receives and transmits over Wifi, then the information will come into the machine, then it’s beamed as an image or an unencrypted file to the computer from the wireless fax printer to a computer. I say beamed, Wifi is not a direct connection either. Wifi transmits in all directions. If the network isn’t “secure,” anyone listening can again pull down this info with a simple network packet sifter. While it’s likely someone will not copy the fax from the airwaves when it comes in, it is a remote possibility if this entity is a potential target for information theft.

Then there is a likely possibility, an Internet fax. This is a web server somewhere, that receives the fax like the old fax machine, and then forwards an image of the fax to someone via unencrypted e-mail (usually). While some of these services can encrypt the image, they’ll likely use the same key for all encryptions for an account. If the user has to log into the service to download the image there is a better for security, but if the image is simply e-mailed sight-unseen, not only is this information stored in the end recipient’s e-mail, it may be stored on the Internet fax server as well: logs, cache files, buffers, and account folders. If the Internet fax service does any sort of OCR (optical character recognition) before creating the unencrypted file, the contents of the fax are again transmitted as clear text.

The "Secure" E-mail Alternative

My mortgage broker sent me a message through what she was calling a "secure e-mail service" which turned out to be a "secure" document exchange from a financial services company. Unfortunately she used "password" as the password. In this service I had no way of changing the password once I logged in.

Another possibility

Something else to consider with the rise of cloud services in information storage is that your personal information may not be in the control of the institutions which are part of the process. If they use cloud-based applications for information storage, all that can be hoped for is strong encryption and very strong passwords. Even these practices can be thwarted by bad habits.

Who gets a copy of the information? It seems like everyone known to man.

I was surprised at the number of individuals being copied on all of the back and forth communications with the Realtor: mortgage brokers, assistants, financial advisors, bosses, inspectors, banks, credit agencies, property owners; the list goes on. Any of these people who doesn’t have a “secure” system in place for any of the messages can become the weakest link in the chain. From a jail broken phone, to an unpatched copy of Windows 98 running on some back office computer, the list of potential vulnerabilities is enormous. What's worse is in my experience most of the government agencies on a local or state level lack the funds necessary to appropriately secure communications, much less look for breaches. For most of my clients I'm only called after a breach has occurred.

Why would someone target these places?

All of the entities I’ve mentioned deal in a lot of personal information. Anyone who wanted to get information on anyone in the process only has to do a little research to determine the infrastructure and shortcomings. Whether it’s intercepting a packet of information delivered by the Postal Service, or not shredding every non-pertinent piece of data, the 250 pages of detailed personal information that we’ve provided to date has been redistributed at least 6 times by my count, not including the copies my e-mail program makes itself. This doesn’t include versioning because of changed closing dates and updates to the applications.

It’s enough to make any information security professional’s head spin.

What can you do?

Get involved in Infosec as a career and change the system. Until then save enough money to pay cash. Once it's all said and done, call to lock your credit records and change all of your accounts. Also be sure to purge sensitive information from all locations where possible.

When mail is [potentially] tampered with and you don’t even know it.

I’ve been a fan of the buy postage online and slap it on a Priority Mail envelope for the longest time, until today. I had to send some sensitive information through the mail because I wasn’t quite ready to drive 40 miles round trip to use FedEx, because I feared my package of sensitive info setting in some FedEx box on a weekend awaiting pick-up was a bad idea. I also thought about encrypting the files and sending them digitally but I’m not entirely sure the parties on the other end would be able to deal with the procedure to access them; even passwords elude some people so two-step authentication via an online method was out of the question.

So I opted for the most “secure” method of delivery possible from the US Postal Service, selecting the “Require Adult Signature” tick box in addition to insuring the package on the USPS website. This is really ridiculous in hindsight, but at the time it felt good. I guess I can thank Seinfeld for causing my fears about mail pricing class systems and mail carrier preferential treatment in regard to extra postage or lack-thereof; that's a fallacy as well because if anything more money for "security" means the more precious the cargo.

Patiently I awaited the tracking info on the website to say “Delivered,” but it never came, even though today was the target delivery date. The reason being, the main sorting facility in the city where the package was being delivered dragged their feet on sorting my high priority package. So when it was finally sorted for its destination, it was already almost 10:00 in the morning. It’s likely sitting in the sorted stacks of mail in the sorting facility waiting for delivery in the morning, but this doesn’t keep my mind from wondering.

How could someone tamper with my mail unknowingly?

Physical tampering on a letter is fairly evident. When someone opens an end and tapes it closed you will likely notice because there are physical signs that it has been tampered with. 

I started thinking about the ubiquitous packaging used by the US Postal Service with their campaign “If it fits, it ships.” Sorting facilities likely have stacks of these preprinted boxes lying around. So if someone were to abscond with a package (for a short time while the tracking info said it was at the sorting facility, or in my case “out for delivery”), they could grab a similar package to the one that I have used (eg. Priority Mail Envelope), and go to their local office where a scanner and printer reside.

Then they could rather carelessly extract all of the documents, make copies, take pictures, or scan the items. Next they would use their new package to repackage my documents, and then scan and reprint the delivery label from my package. Place it on the new package and return the items back to the sorting facility or the waiting pile.

It’s not just mail

Then I started thinking about that expensive option of using a service like FedEx who also uses the same sort of standardized packaging. The same scenario applies. Also in regard to FedEx if someone were to notice a pattern of deliveries, they might interlope to satisfy a curiosity.

So, How Can You Really Tell?

Using simple two-step authentication (verification) is one method. The best way I thought of so far was to mark the package in a way that was nearly impossible to replicate, or in a way so that a normal onlooker for the package would not notice. Colored markers, color printout of an image from the web, but basically you mark the package.

Next you would take a picture of the markings and either text, or e-mail it to the recipient (if it is someone you can contact). Let them know that you are sending a package and send them the picture so they can verify that it is indeed the envelope or package that you initially packed.

If you have budgets for custom printing you can print your customized envelope for the internal documents and wrap the interior of your package with something that's not easily replaceable. Companies like Uline sell tape and tamper-evident bags that show indication of tampering. If the document arrives in a non-standard format you know the package was tampered with, and you can then start an investigation with the delivery service.

What companies would be the target of such an attack?

Banks, finance companies, mortgage lenders, payroll companies, Realtors, insurance companies, basically any company that receives sensitive personal information through a standardized delivery service such as FedEx or the US Postal Service in the States. Outbound mail from these companies likely isn't so much of a target in this regard for this type of attack. It's much easier to just take the letter outright if there is no tracking. Mail gets lost everyday right? The bank would assume the information was lost in transit and resubmit. If it was unexpected (like a replacement credit card), the end recipient would be clueless to the attack. Corporations only care about protection of personal information in regard to the bad press or negative media fall-out.

In regard to identity theft the corporations aren't necessarily liable if someone finds a way to game the system, so the companies will not invest money for a potential threat.

Inbound mail or packages from individuals tend to have people's personal information in them, like in instances where the senders are completing a correspondence or form. Since they have a vested interest in maintaining their identity security they will likely opt for more postage.

Final thoughts

Call it paranoia, but I notice patterns, and when I’m sending sensitive info in high profile packages to consistent recipients in a way that would normally not have a time delay or interference, the anomalies in transit do pique my interests. If anyone tells you that snail mail is safer than e-mail or encrypted files they do not know what they are talking about unless they're using a complicated verification method like I've discussed here.

Remember security is an illusion.

CentOS: Create a Blank file or redirect the default Apache Welcome Page

When managing or hosting a CentOS box, Apache will show the CentOS welcome page. This page contains information you likely don’t want people to have, so things like the fact that you’re running Apache on CentOS. While these things can also show up in the headers, you want to remove the default page in the event someone hits the website from the IP address only or if they use a domain that resolves to the box, but there is no directory setup for that domain.

Quite a few of the online discussion forums and even the notes on the welcome screen suggest that you should visit the file at /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf on CentOS.

If you cat the file you’ll likely see something like this:

# This configuration file enables the default "Welcome"# page if there is no default index page present for# the root URL. To disable the Welcome page, comment# out all the lines below.                                                                       

<LocationMatch "^/+$">

    Options -Indexes

    ErrorDocument 403 /error/noindex.html

</LocationMatch>

Their suggestion is to comment out the lines. By doing so, you’re not presenting the visitor with a blank page, but rather a different error message. To edit the file you’ll need to be logged in as root (su -) or be a member of sudoers and use sudo.

Use the editor of your choice. I’m using emacs myself, but vi will also work. So my command looks like:

emacs /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf

So if I comment out those lines with # comment tags and save the file, then nothing happens.

#<LocationMatch "^/+$">

# Options -Indexes

#ErrorDocument 403 /error/noindex.html

#</LocationMatch>

This is because changes to configuration files in Apache require a server restart. No need to restart the box, just the Apache server; as root:

service httpd restart

You should see something similar to the following:

When you visit the page showing the welcome page before, now you’ll see a Forbidden error. This still lets savvy users know that you’re running Apache.

For me this wasn’t enough, so I took it a step further.

Since I don’t want anyone to see anything, I created a file in /var/www/error called noerror.php. Assuming you’re running PHP on your box you can do this with something like touch, so :

touch /var/www/error/noerror.php

If you want the page to blank, then you’re done with the file at this point. If you're not running PHP but only want the blank page you can call it noerror.html

For the Redirect

If you want the file to redirect somewhere else you can edit the contents to do something like this:

<?php header('Location: http://www.somedomain.com'); ?>

If you wanted this to be a permanent redirect you can add the 301 redirect declaration heard above the header line. Note if you permanently redirect you will have to flush your cache to access a directory that delivered a 403 Forbidden error.

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.somedomain.com");

Set appropriate permissions on the file for your setup.

Edit the welcome.conf file again. (Usually you can press the up arrow on your keyboard to cycle through.)

Uncomment the lines suggested by the comments. So you should be back to this.

<LocationMatch "^/+$">

    Options -Indexes

    ErrorDocument 403 /error/noindex.html

</LocationMatch>

Change the ErrorDocument path to /error/noerror.php, so the contents should look like this:

<LocationMatch "^/+$">

    Options -Indexes

    ErrorDocument 403 /error/noerror.php

</LocationMatch>

Save the file. Restart the webserver again. Now instead of seeing the Welcome Screen you should see the domain from the redirect.

Hope this helps someone.

Note: If you don’t have an index file in the server you’re redirecting to it might create an endless loop.

Why time travel into the past is not possible

There is a simple reason for why time travel into the past isn’t possible. Everything revolves in a predictable motion from sub atomic particles all the way up to planets around their suns and galaxies. With these rotations charges are exchanged or kept at atomic and subatomic levels, and everything works in reaction causing what we see as life or existence. There is no historical record of space-time (space time is simply man’s observation), and changes and fluctuations based on subatomic inconsistencies and interactions exist; random chaos at atomic levels.

Without a record of spacetime going backward in time would mean that some reactions might reverse while others which are unpredictable would not (eg. nuclear chain reactions). If you could move at the speed of light around the sun (matter can't travel that fast) you would simply be traveling around the sun at the speed of light in whichever direction desired... sorry Star Trek fans... no whales today.

The closest thing, involving stasis… a physical recording.

If you record all of the particles in motion as an event happens in some system you might be able to recreate a representation of the scene of the event using the involved structures, but you can not recreate the event itself, you can only alter the replayed recreation or arrangement of molecules and atoms. All matter would have to be contained in a confined space, and all molecular motion would need to be stopped in that confined space, in order to accurately recreate an event and capture all involved components at a sub-atomic level; thermodynamic equilibrium would need to be achieved to insure a proper record. To record all of the particles without interfering with their structure would require disassembly for a proper mapping; a deconstruction.

The process of structural recording should never, ethically be done on a living sentient thing which would also prevent things such as teleportation or exact atomic cloning of living organisms. The reason for this is because stopping all atoms in their present state would cause their [natural] interactions to fail and their atomic structures would be disrupted. If the matter was not stopped prior to recording, the speed of the atomic breakdown could prove extremely painful and the instantaneous reactions between cells in the organism would make the recorded position of the future recorded cells in a state of reaction. Imagine burning every cell off of your body one cell at a time, the reassembled image of the original (yourself) would contain evidence of the trauma because you couldn’t record all of the cells in their paused molecular subatomic state at the same time. This is all of course based on the organism itself surviving the pause or deceleration to maximum entropy.

Furthermore upon reassembly if the recorded cells were to be rearranged there would be a chance of accidentally creating an excited nucleus causing a fission reaction.

I would like to state that I've not studied these things at any level at all and this is simply my uneducated hypothesis based on my observation.

The universe isn't a hologram, but it looks that way... here's why.

I read a headline on the Nature site stating “Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram.” I was surprised this was news or that they had taken a time to create a computer model to discern this bit of information. A hologram, according to Wikipedia, is a representation of an image in space (not outer space) made from an apparently random structure or representation of either varying intensity, density, or profile. According to the article:

“A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.”

Maybe I’m the only one who sees the universe this way, but I was thinking, in a more modern parlance, “duh.” Then they go on to talk about Quantum Physics and a 10-Dimensional Theory of Gravity and how the universe will be hopefully more easily explained in the future in terms of Quantum Theory. Okay, so there we have a problem.

Everything we see from Earth and near space is indeed a projection on whatever surface we’re using to view it (technically)… either it’s the lenses in our eyes, a camera lens, or the output of a computer model based on data that we’re gleaned from observation. No two eyes are alike, no two people are alike, and while we may see things similarly we do not see the exact same things.

Heavenly bodies beyond our solar system as we see them in the sky are but a historical representation of something that once was in time. The distance of the stars, each multiple light years away means that the light we see varies in age (it takes a really long time to get here). It takes longer for light from a star much further away to reach us. Any calculation in the movement of these stars has to be based on fallible things such as time and the amount of light and waves being measured, because there is not enough historical data for us to accurately predict how far away an object outside our solar system really is. We as a people with our present intellects have not existed long enough to gather enough information about the movement of all of the stars using the latest technology. We still get excited about landing remote controlled vehicles successfully in our own solar system... billions of dollars have been spent on this very act.

Additionally because objects can vary in size and because we have no way of discerning the size accurately in three dimensions here on Earth from our vantage point, parallax is a major issue and prevents us from actually appropriately gauging distance. We would have to map every star and object in the sky at all times from more than one vantage point. Add in assumptions for constants such as the speed of light in a vacuum (unbent by gravity), and because we can not measure all of the factors acting on the minute amounts of light that make it to our instruments we can make no solid theories as to anything remotely substantial, only calculations of the subset of data required to properly model our perceptions which contain very small amounts of data in the grand scheme of things. We can theorize about what atoms exist on other planets in our solar system but we still don't know.

Furthermore, this is all unprovable (in terms of their scientific research) because we will not exist long enough to determine whether the experiments are true, therefore we should stop wasting efforts on any sort of scientific rational relating to Quantum Physics, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Theory and focus on making life of today and tomorrow better for the people who exist now. There are so many more things that matter in life. What's next, interstellar space travel? Leave Sci-fi as a hobby. Don't make the rest of society pay for actual real science fiction through failed experimentation. We are not in The Matrix, we are not in a simulation, don't get your hopes up. Life will be just as cruel tomorrow.