Technical Use Controls

In March 2017, WikiLeaks published the 'Vault 7' series of documents detailing 'cyber' activities and capabilities of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Among a wide variety of implant & exploit frameworks the final documents released as part of the dump, related to a project code-named 'Protego', stood out as unusual due to describing a piece of missile control technology rather than CNO capabilities. As a result, these documents have received comparatively little attention from the media and security researchers.

In this talk we will take a look at the 'Vault 7' Protego documents, which have received very little attention so far, and challenge the assertion that Protego was a 'suspected assassination module for [a] GPS guided missile system ... used on-board Pratt & Whitney aircraft' based on system block diagrams, build instructions and a few interesting news items. In addition, we will discuss hypothetical weaknesses in systems like it.