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

The press office said a statement would be issued today, but has yet to be released.

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 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. In addition, Microsoft has issued two patches, one in 2006 and one in October, to close holes in its software exploited by Neeris.

The agency's Web site was up and running this morning, but a receptionist in the press office said "the agency's whole e-mail system is down, and the agency is unable to receive e-mail."