>Believing it is ok reflects the same juvenile thinking that motivated another "researcher," Chris Roberts, to apparently "experiment" with live airplanes, as r

>Believing it is ok reflects the same juvenile thinking that motivated another "researcher," Chris Roberts, to apparently "experiment" with live airplanes, as reported by Wired and other news outlets. Hackers are not entitled to jeopardize the lives of innocent people in order to make a point. They can prove their discoveries without putting others, who have not consented to be guinea pigs, at risk. Part of me wants to agree. Part of me wonders how many times a major security issue can be ignored, jeopardizing lives, simply because it doesn't get media coverage and was disclosed to the company but ignored by them. Do you trust companies won't simply sweep a problem under the rug and try to forget about it? I consider that to be naive. The person you cited, Chris Roberts, had brought up the issue with multiple airlines multiple times for years. The problem persisted because he was ignored. Would it take a malicious hacker hijacking a plane and killing all 200 passengers/crew on board to fix the problem? Or would you rather him try and publicize the dangers of their systems with a harmful stunt of dropping down oxygen masks (which he didn't end up doing, just tweeted about how he might)? Personally I'd take the oxygen masks, but it seems other people would prefer to wait and see if 200 people have to die before an issue gets fixed...because that's the more "ethical" solution.