RSSMalware infection strikes US Justice Department
By Angela Gunn | Published May 21, 2009, 7:12 PM
A virus infection of unknown type and origin necessitated the partial shutdown of computer networks belonging to the US Marshals Service on Thursday. The FBI was also believed to have been infected, and other Justice Department agencies were taking precautions Thursday as well.
Nikki Credic, a spokesperson for the US Marshals Service, provided very little data about the nature of the problem, but she did state that no data was known to have been compromised. The agency took down its net access and shut down some parts of its e-mail service while tech folk got to the source of the problem.
Government agencies are hardly immune from infections large and small. Back in November, the Department of Defense went through considerable trouble over an infection that began with, it is believed, an infected thumb drive. In the resulting uproar, the DoD ended up banning the use of any removable media in computers attached to the NIPRNET or SIPRNet systems.
"she did state that no data was known to have been compromised. "
Every piece of data on or accessible to any infected machine should be considered compromised until proven otherwise. Especially since these idiots are the people who handle witness protection, fugitive recovery and federal prisoner transfers.
Not shown to have been compromised... **head desk** If this came from professionals, the first signs may be dead witnesses and escaped federal prisoners.
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|actually, if there was or was no data compromised, the feds would not reveal that information.
as far as the compromise of top secret data goes, who knows if it is true or dis-information. it all depends on what games the feds are playing.
the question remains, is whether or not angela gunn and beta news were dooped into this story, like cheney did when he manipulated the new york times by planting stories through them.
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|maybe it was an
al-kaida-fection, n-korean-worm, shanghi-trojan
or a d***-cheney-republican-virus.
[perhaps, the history and political books might follow beta news unorthodox use of the strike out]
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|Agree with Hollywood 100%! I would add also Windows Defender and other garbage used in Windows Vista !
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|Should have used Vista with UAC.
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|Or caulked shut the USB ports, but maybe I'm cynical :-) .
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|Just disable the ports in the bios, and lock the bios with a good password. One of the reasons PS/2 mice and keyboards out to still be used in government agencies. Whatever though.
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