Chris Roberts may be trying to drum up more business for his security company but his hat seems not to be entirely entirely "white", as indicated in an earlier diary when he was earlier thrown off a United Airlines flight and questioned by the FBI in Denver. Maybe he's just flogging a screenplay in anticipation of a future film project or just an attention seeker with a mid-flight/life crisis during the Spring/Summer travel season.
The concern was highlighted after the FBI issued an affidavit to search the computers belonging to security expert Chris Roberts, who told investigators that he hacked a plane's in-flight entertainment system 15 to 20 times and was also able to cause the engines to rev up, which allegedly led to "a lateral or sideways movement of the plane," according to court documents.
Robert Siciliano, an online safety expert with Intel security, has met Roberts in the past and described him as an "ethical hacker," sometimes called a "white hat."
"His expertise is not to take down a plane, it's to makes sure that doesn't happen,” Siciliano told ABC News of what he knows of Roberts' work.
Roberts declined to speak to ABC News but has been actively posting to his Twitter account.
According to affidavit, Roberts said that as a passenger he broke into the planes' entertainment system through boxes under the seats...
According to the affidavit, agents later found that the seat electronic box on that plane "showed signs of tampering in the location where Roberts had been seated."
Roberts declined to speak with ABC News today but spoke to FOX after last month about hacking into a plane's wi-fi:
During FBI interviews in February and March, the document says, Roberts told investigators he hacked into in-flight entertainment systems aboard aircraft. He claimed to have done so 15 to 20 times from 2011 to 2014.
He also said, according to the document, that once he had hacked into the systems and then overwrote code, enabling him to issue a "CLB," or climb, command.
"He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights," the document says.
Roberts said he knew of vulnerabilities aboard three types of Boeing aircraft and one Airbus model. He hacked into in-flight entertainment systems made by Thales and Panasonic, he told agents, according to the document.