Unbelievable

That flight-critical aircraft systems would be unencrypted...

Hacker uses an Android to remotely attack and hijack an airplane 

The Hack in the Box (#HITB2013AMS) security conference in Amsterdam has a very interesting lineup of talks [pdf]. One that jumped out was the Aircraft Hacking: Practical Aero Series presented by Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs in Germany.

According to the abstract, “This presentation will be a practical demonstration on how to remotely attack and take full control of an aircraft, exposing some of the results of my three years research on the aviation security field. The attack performed will follow the classical methodology, divided in discovery, information gathering, exploitation and post-exploitation phases. The complete attack will be accomplished remotely, without needing physical access to the target aircraft at any time, and a testing laboratory will be used to attack virtual airplanes systems.

Well, he only hacked a "virtual" airplane, but why in HELL was this not thought of when they designed those systems?

Idiots. I'm ashamed of some of my fellow engineers.