Threat Management

WikiLeaks reveals the CIA’s Protego missile control system

WikiLeaks took a break from posting CIA hacking tools as it has done for the last six months to instead publish four hardware/software manuals along with 37 additional documents, purportedly from the processor maker Microchip Technology, that discuss a missile control system.

The documents are part of what WikiLeaks said the CIA calls the Protego project and contain schematics and written instructions for what it says is a Raytheon-developed missile control system that uses PIC microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology. The whistleblower group said the manuals were contained in the CIA's Vault 7 documents dump that it has mined for hacking tools, but it did not know why the manuals were included.

“Indeed there is no explicit indication why it is part of the project repositories of the CIA/EDG at all,” WikiLeaks said on its site.

WikiLeaks gave very little description of what it was revealing and some of the interpretation it did offer may be inaccurate as it states the system in question is for use on Pratt & Whitney aircraft. That company only manufactures commercial and military engines, not the actual airplane.

WikiLeaks has been steadily releasing information from Vault 7 since March.

Raytheon and Microchip Technology were both contacted for comment, but have not yet responded.

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