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>Is that even legal?

Generally no. There is a difference between being unprotected and being open to the public. While in some cases a person can claim to not have known and proving mens rea for such a crime is much harder than if it was protected and the protection had to be bypassed, it isn't impossible.

Such laws are selectively enforced, but being this is Boeing, you can expect it will be enforced on their behalf if they have any desire for it to be (given the current PR issues and the impact this might have, they might let this one go, at least for the time being).

I'm surprised that IOActive backed him up on this, seems like it's treading a line that businesses normally are very conservative around. I very much expected him to be unaffiliated with a large organization after reading that.

Isn't this in itself a big story? How the hell are they being so lax with their source code?

Probably depends entirely on how annoyed Boeing are.