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Quantum Mechanics 1: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Disclaimer: I wrote this blog solely on my knowledge and my perspective on quantum mechanics. If you find anything questionable, feel free to hit me up.

Pretty sure everyone is interested in quantum mechanics after watching Avengers: Endgame. Pop culture introduced quantum mechanics to the general audience. It was there way before pop culture became a thing, but writers of novels and movies started to perceive quantum mechanics like the ‘backup’ for all the unexplainable science fiction elements in their stories. Of course, quantum mechanics is not an easy branch of physics to start with. Even quantum physicists who study these things find them intimidating. Since quantum mechanics is a very wide field and it will take days to explain all of it, I’ll do a few posts about quantum mechanics so you understand each and every concept clearly. 

Quantum mechanics (or quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical model or the matrix mechanics, call it whatever you want, they’re all the same thing) is the weird branch of physics that deals with the behaviour of subatomic particles like protons, electrons and neutrons (there are actually 12 subatomic particles divided into 4 different subgroups but that’s a story for another day).

One of the most fundamental things in quantum mechanics is the wave-particle duality concept. This concept says that each and every particle in the universe acts as both particle and wave at the same time. Particles can be defined by their positions in space but we can’t do the same thing for waves because waves are just disturbances spread out in space. So we define waves by their wavelength which also contributes to the momentum of the wave, according to the de Broglie theorem (don’t bother much about this, it’s not relevant for now). The wave-particle duality concept is what drove Werner Heisenberg (you might have heard his name in the first Thor movie as the Heisenberg bridge or Einstien-Rosen bridge or simply said, wormhole) to come up with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. 

According to the German physicist,  the position and the velocity of a certain particle cannot be measured exactly at the same time, even by mathematical or theoretical means. The theory behind this principle is simply amazing but it’s too technical and needs a much deeper understanding of quantum mechanics. So let me just use an analogy for this. Imagine you’re looking out a window and you see a car moving. You cannot determine the position of the car because it is moving. But it is very easy to determine the speed (or velocity, it’s not that significant right now). And let’s say you take a picture of that same car. Now you can determine the position of the car but not the speed of the car because obviously, it’s not moving in the picture. 

But you might argue “Hey, I can know the position and the speed of the car at the same time by using classical physics (the everyday physics).” Well, the analogy I used applies only at the quantum level. But that doesn’t mean it is not applicable in daily life situations. We know momentum is defined as the product of mass and velocity. Which means heavier objects have a larger momentum. Now, going back to the wave-particle duality concept, we know that all particles exist as particles and waves at the same time. And the momentum contributes to the wavelength of the wave corresponding to each particle (or vice versa). As the momentum increases, the wavelength of a particle (or wave, it doesn’t matter) decreases. A short wavelength does not have much impact on calculations which is why we can use classical physics to measure the position and the speed of the car at the same time. But classical physics fails when it comes to quantum level because subatomic particles have longer wavelengths and the wave-particle duality concept is an important thing to be considered at the quantum level. At this level, both position and speed (which is derived from momentum) are important but both can’t be determined precisely. 

I’ve been explaining so long about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that I almost forgot to explain why it is important to understand this. As the position and velocity of a particle can’t be determined at the same time, predicting where the particle will be at next becomes impossible. Like in classical physics, you can determine where the car will be at next because you know both position and speed. But at the quantum level, you don’t know where the car is going to end up because you know either position or speed. See, this is what makes quantum mechanics interesting. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle explains why things at the quantum level are unpredictable (actually it also relates with the Schrodinger cat thought experiment but I think I’ll talk about it in the future). Things are unpredictable because you don’t know where or how they’re gonna end up. That is why physicists (or movie characters) say the quantum world is unpredictable and anything can happen anytime at the quantum level. 

And that’s it about the first tiny part of quantum mechanics. Explaining quantum mechanics is like explaining classical physics with all the details. So just stay tuned for the next part of this topic. 

P.S.: If you feel like discussing quantum mechanics with someone, my inbox is always open :)

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Hacking: Are we really secure?

Disclaimer: I wrote this blog solely on my knowledge and my perspective on cybersecurity and ethical hacking. If you find anything questionable, feel free to contact me.

I can bet you 100% that all of us has watched at least one movie (it all started with the original Tron) with a hacker doing cool but evil stuff. I mean imagine you can enter someone’s head and steal information from their brain or mind. Wouldn’t be that so awesome because you can know whatever a person doing by reading their mind. Hacking is actually the same thing but instead of entering someone’s head (come on, we don’t have Charles Xavier's powers to read minds), we enter someone’s device. And when I say a device, I mean any electronic device that has an operating system or a simple embedded system. That includes computers, tablet PCs, smartphones, smart TVs, cars with smart display systems, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and etc.

If we said “I am gonna enter your computer system and steal your information” 10 years ago, no one would have batted an eye. But today, it’s a big deal. No. It’s a huge deal. We are so dependent on our electronic devices till to the point where we keep important passwords and documents in our devices. And we think hacking activities only happen in movies. Little we know about the small scale hackers around us. Little we know about how someone can steal information when it is being transmitted through wireless networks. Little we know about how an intermediate hacker can enter your device especially your smartphones by just connecting to the same network that we are connected to.

It is essential to know about the nature of hackers before we go on to what hackers can do. There are three types of hackers: white hat hackers, black hat hackers and also grey hat hackers. White hat hackers (like myself hehe) are also known as ethical hackers or pentesters (penetration tester). These hackers are the ones who are allowed to hack legally but not to steal information, but to test how secure a system or a server is. These hackers will be required to go through several certification courses and will be employed by big companies to try to penetrate their systems and identify loopholes in their system security. Black hat hackers (the ones we see in movies) are the exact opposites of white hat hackers. Black hat hackers are the ones who use hacking activities to penetrate a system to do illegal stuff. Given the right skills and enough information, black hat hackers can cripple entire governments. And the last one is grey hat hackers. Grey hat hackers are similar to black hat hackers, they penetrate systems illegally but once they are done, they tell the system admins regarding the weaknesses they found while they were hacking the system. But their activities are still considered illegal because they hacked without permission.

Before we can go deeper into hacking, we need to understand what is an IP address and a MAC address. An Internet Protocol (IP) address refers to your ‘address’ on a network while a Media Access Control (MAC) address refers to your device’s ‘ID’. These two pieces of information are very important to penetrate into someone’s system. Anyone can discover your IP and MAC addresses when you’re connected to a network. This is why it is highly advised not to connect public or unknown networks because it leaves you exposed to hacking activities.

There are two types of attacks a hacker can perform to gain access to your device. The first attack is called a server-side attack. A server-side attack can only be done when a hacker knows your IP address and is connected to the same WiFi network as yours. When a hacker decides on a target in a network, the hacker will place himself in the middle of the connection between the access point (the router that provides you with the Internet access) and the target device. In other terms, a hacker will be able to intercept a connection (a Man in the Middle attack) without the target device knowing about it. Once a connection is intercepted, the hacker will be able to see all the information that flows between the target device and the access point. This includes your critical information like passwords, images, files and even chat messages. The hacker also will be able to break into your device through this attack and access all the information stored locally in your device. This attack is widely performed by hackers to gain more information about a victim by reading and analysing all the data gained through interception.

Another type of attack is a client-side attack. Client-side attacks are deemed more dangerous compared to server-side attacks because it installs a ‘backdoor’ in your system without you noticing it. Ever seen ads online where you click on them, they immediately download something and asks you to open them? That is an example of the client-side attack. The hacker sends something malicious disguised as an update for common software, an application or even an image. These files will be brought to you by social engineering (you can Google that because it is a whole different topic and needs another blog post huhu). Once these files are installed into your system, they will deploy viruses into your system. The most common type of virus deployed by these files is the Trojan virus (FYI, the Trojan story is a very interesting read and it gives you the meaning of the name of this virus). Once released, the Trojan virus will create a backdoor for the hacker in your system. Using this backdoor, the hacker will be able to see and control everything in your device. They will be able to read all your documents, use your device as a stepping stone to hack into other devices or even use your webcam without your knowledge. A hacker with a backdoor in your system will have more access to your computer There are more types of viruses that have specific purposes but for now we will just look into Trojans because Trojans are the ones that are used on common people like us.

So does privacy really means nothing in this digital world? Well, it’s a yes and no kinda question. You can protect yourself from hackers but not entirely. If a hacker decides to break into your system, there is little we can do to protect ourselves. The best way is to install an anti-virus software with cybersecurity extension that can monitor and help you to keep you safe from attacks. But let me warn you, anti-virus software can be easily breached so it provides a little security only to your system. But still something is better than nothing right? If you really are worried and want to secure your system, you can always seek the help of a white-hat hacker or a pentester to teach you how to protect yourself from attacks mentioned above or just help you to secure your network. Hacking shouldn’t be taken lightly because our dependence on our electronic devices has increased exponentially over the past few years and a person can be exploited by just hacking into his/her devices. In a nutshell, be safe on when you’re connected to a WiFi network, don’t download any unknown files and always be careful on what you’re accessing on the Internet.

Special credits to Zaid Sabih from ZSecurity, Ireland who taught me everything I know about cybersecurity and ethical hacking. 

P.S.: If you suspect or you know that you have been hacked, I’ll be more than happy to help you in this matter.