An amateur pilot has reportedly assembled and hacked real aircraft cockpit systems, demonstrating their vulnerabilities.
"Security researcher Hugo Teso was able to "hijack" the systems to feed false navigation information to a simulated jet that made it change course." BBC
It's not hard to think of scenarios where a well-resourced, competent and overtly malicious yet non-suicidal adversary could wreak havoc by redirecting aircraft, missiles, anti-missile-missiles, drones etc. using similar techniques, or simply interfere with them, hence one would have thought that information security was an obvious safety-critical requirement for their navigation and comms systems ... like for example the 30 to 50% of US military drones said to be "hack-proof"(hack-proof indeed: a bold claim!).
No doubt cost is a major factor. Security is costly. Effective high-tech security in high-risk situations is very costly, but so too are incidents if/when they do occur. The war is asymmetric since adversaries need only clamber through the one tiny breach in an otherwise inpenetrable defence wall to overwhelm the castle. Are we spending enough?
Regards,
Gary Hinson IsecT Ltd.