A US Department “Handles” Malware Infection By Destroying The Infected Equipment

You’d think the American government departments, with all their funding and extra-legal powers, would know how to effectively deal with a malware infection. Well apparently not. According to a report by the US Department of Commerce’s inspector general the Economic Department administration “dealt” with a malware infection by destroying the apparently infected equipment.

In December 2011 the US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) notified the Department of Commerce Computer Incident Response Team (DOC CIRT) that a potential malware infection was detected on their systems. The Department of Commerce’s cybersecurity contractors were called in to investigate and after a 2 week investigation claimed to have found nothing significant, with the majority of malware being false-positives. Yet the Department of Commerce proceeded with a total destruction of all electrical equipment destroying a staggering $170,000 worth of equipment including mice, keyboards, desktop PCs, TVs, cameras, printers and more.

What’s even more ludicrous is that they planned on destroying over $3 million worth of other equipment, but stopped as funds were running low. Naturally the costs incurred are for both the destroyed equipment and the cost of replacing that equipment. The inspector general of the investigation said the destruction of equipment was clearly unnecessary and led to the Department of Commerce spending half their 2012 fiscal year budget on the operation.

Image courtesy of the U.S Department of Commerce