More than two years before coming under FBI questioning about possibly hacking into the in-flight entertainment system of a commercial plane while it was in mid air, a security researcher told peers he accessed the computer controls of other highly sensitive aviation and aeronautics systems, including the International Space Station.

Chris Roberts of One World Labs told an audience in 2012 that he bypassed the on-board firewall of a Boeing 737 plane he was traveling on and made contact with the Apache Tomcat webserver the firewall was protecting. He told the same audience he accessed communications systems NASA uses to control the International Space Station and changed the temperature. It was impossible to confirm the veracity of those claims, which went largely unnoticed until Friday, when an FBI search warrant application came to light alleging Roberts told agents he took control of a jet plane and briefly caused it to climb and fly sideways.

The 2012 talk—titled By Land, By Sea, By Air—has already touched off howls of protest from some researchers who say even the passive accessing of restricted parts of a plane while it's in flight is grossly reckless. Critics also argue the behavior would likely be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a felony to gain unauthorized access to protected computer systems.

The talk has also generated a vigorous debate among security professionals about whether it's technically possible to carry out the hacks described in Roberts's presentation and in an interrogation with FBI agents. Some participants argue computer systems in commercial planes are segmented in a way that prevents passengers from accessing computerized instruments used to control the aircraft or to communicate with people on the ground. Other researchers say the firewalls and other intrusion prevention systems aren't sufficiently tightened down.

For the past half decade or so, Roberts has belonged to this latter group of researchers. On numerous occasions, he has publicly complained that airline manufacturers and the hundreds of partners these manufacturers rely on for various hardware and software components have failed to fix serious vulnerabilities he has privately reported. Among other things, he has said, it's possible for passengers to use specially equipped laptops to access an on-board network known as the Intellibus system, named after the manufacturer who makes it.

Beginning around the 18:00 mark in the above video, for instance, Roberts discussed the ability to use the VxWorks real-time operating system to tap the programming interfaces developers use to access an aircraft's intellibus network. He went on to say:

You on your own system have made yourself a self-contained Vx environment that can communicate with the intellibus system. You've had to do some bloody research for it and you've had to figure out exactly how it works. But when you've done it, what you now have is the ability to create yourself a crate, and in this case it was for a 787 that we made that basically shut the engines off using the fade [inaudible] chip architecture at 35,000 feet. Loves, hugs, and kisses, One World Labs. [comment about some issues being fixed] Sitting on an airplane going off to Norway and actually sitting on a 737 going down to San Antonio on Tuesday we made friends with the firewall. We overrode the firewall and made friends with the second firewall. Once we were on the second firewall we ran into an Apache Tomcat sitting on [port?] 1433. It's not patched. Have fun with it – carefully. Simple stuff. It takes a little bit of work. It takes you coming a little prepared. It means you going onto an airplane with a machine that's capable of having some fun with their environments. How many of you guys fly on the planes that have the Gogo wireless running on them? I challenge you next time you're on the airplane that has Gogo wireless, see how far through the firewall you can get. See if you can get to the ground-based communication that they use. See if you can get to the intellibus architecture. Please don't take the airplane out of the sky. And for those of you who are in the airline industry listening to this, fix it please. These are problems that we've highlighted for the last year or two. This is stuff we've brought up for a while now. Same as the cars. The vehicle stuff we've brought up for several years. Now I know that the cycle they have for fixing stuff is extended but it would be nice to actually know this stuff is being done. Because the same things you can do with airplanes you can do with drones as well.

During a question-and-answer period near the 47:00 mark, an audience member asked about accessing instruments used to control NASA's Curiosity Rover, which landed on Mars in August 2012, two months before Roberts delivered his talk at the GrrCon hacker conference. After a lengthy laugh, Roberts provided the following response:

Those are fun. I got into trouble for playing with the Space Station shit what was it seven, eight, nine years ... how many years ago was that? Crap. Eight, nine years ago we messed around with the Space Station. We adjusted the temperature on it. It was quite fun. We got yelled at by NASA. If they're going to leave open shit that's not encrypted that's their own damn silly fault. We tried. The Curiosity Rover on Mars. The suggestion was to take that for a spin. We've actually started to investigate it. The closest we've done is figure out exactly how they're communicating, how they're controlling it, and we might have one or two of the passwords for some of the software that we know are still in default mode. But the problem is actually getting into it without breaking more laws than we're used to breaking. No, I think NASA would probably really get pissed at me for that one.

There's little to no debate that Roberts's research is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the security of aviation and aeronautics computer systems. So far, no one has seriously argued he intended to inflict damage. But that's largely where the agreement ends. As stated earlier, Roberts's defenders claim his comments are being taken out of context and that many of the things he's describing aren't technically feasible. Taken another way, however, the comments portray a researcher who either embellished the hacks he described to fellow researchers or felt no compunction or remorse for the potential danger they may have posed to others. Taken this way, Roberts's comments also show little regard for respecting the legal boundaries of other people's networks and computers.

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who are providing legal representation to Roberts, didn't respond to an e-mail seeking comment. This post will be updated if they respond later.