Take over an airplane simply using his Android phone

Have you seen Skyfall???  former MI6 operative Raoul Silva, the bad guy humiliates, discredits M as revenge against her for betraying him.

Silva was "more than a villain", larger than life, but could it happen... in Silva's first salvo's with bond he gloats at the possibilities of his point and click (pip) world, but could it really happen??

Imagine the kind of havoc a malicious hacker could cause if he or she were able to take over an airplane simply using his Android phone. With a tap of his or her fingers, the hacker could arbitrarily control the plane remotely and redirect its path. If you think this is only something that could happen in a Hollywood movie, think again, because that's exactly the scenario a German security researcher laid out on Wednesday at a conference in Amsterdam.

Hugo Teso, a security researcher for the German IT consultancy firm N.Runs — he is a trained commercial pilot as well — explained at the Hack in the Box security conference that a protocol used to transmit data to commercial airplanes can be hacked, turning the hacker into a full-fledged hijacker.

The flawed protocol is a data exchange system called Aircraft Communications Addressing and Report System, or ACARS. Exploiting its flaws, as well as the bugs found in flight management software made by companies like Honeywell, Thales, and Rockwell Collins, Teso maintains he can take over a plane by sending it his own malicious radio signals. To do that, he has created an exploit framework, codenamed SIMON, and an Android app called PlaneSploit that can communicate with the airplanes' Flight Management Systems (FMS).

"You can use this system to modify approximately everything related to the navigation of the plane," Teso told Forbes' Andy Greenberg in an interview. "That includes a lot of nasty things."

makes you think.