Reading the comments on the link above is funny. The people who try to paint a scenario that this would crash a plane are not very well informed.

Wonder if the story is true...

I would think pure bullsh!t. Those systems are seperate from any other system on the plane. No way are they going to integrate them. (where is the mad Dr. strange on this)

Yeah, that is why the comments about the danger is so stupid. Of course bringing down a video/game server won't crash the plane. Still some "chicken-little" type people will try to raise a panic.

No, I wonder if the crashing of the system is true. It very well could be. Who knows

You guys are NUTS that is SUCH a risk OOHHHHH IM TELLLIN' /sarcasm

but yeah the comments were just as good as the story.

Well, I'm flattered! In general, these systems are very isolated from any flight related avionics/power etc.. But, you know anything can happen. There were some references to Swissair 111 in the comments, that was an incident where the in-flight entertainment system caused a fire.. So, I suppose it could happen. But I assure you these systems get rigorous testing and and its very hard to get anything FAA approved, so basically I think your toaster is more dangerous. I know mine is! :)

The Swissair 111 incident was down to the in-flight entertainment central PC (which was new) not having enough ventilation causing it to overheat. Crashing a system would (unless it put it in an infinite loop, which it does not sound like it does) actually cause the system to cool down ;)

*I watch "Air crash investigation on Discovery far too much*

So if they crashed the in-flight entertainment system on flight 111, they may not have had the fire :)

I like that it was posted on "The Resource for Security Executives"