Witness protection program compromised by Malware infection.

From ComputerWorld:

Malware crippled Windows-based computer systems at the U.S. Marshals Service, which hunts federal fugitives and operates the country's witness protection program, knocking the agency’s network offline.

The agency's press office confirmed it was having network problems and that its e-mail system was down Thursday morning, but it was unclear if the outage extended across the entire network.

Per government regulations, agencies are required to report security incidents to the US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). A call to CERT was not returned by press time.

It was not clear if the malware was the cause of the network outage or if the agency took down systems to stem the spread of what was believed to be the Neeris worm, which saw a new version appear last month that copies Conficker's evil ways.The agency was running desktop malware software, but it had not been updated for more than three years -- even though the agency had paid for upgrades to newer versions that protect against Neeris.