Malware downs National Vulnerability Database

The National Vulnerability Database has been offline for almost a week after malware was discovered on two servers.

Held by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the database's public-facing website and other services have been offline since Friday due to a malware infection on two web servers.

It was unknown when the service would be back online.

“We do not know yet exactly when the database will be back online but we are working as quickly as we can to get the website back in service," NSIT spokeswoman Gail Porter said in an email posted to Google Plus.

"The National Vulnerability Database public-facing website and several other NIST-hosted websites are currently unavailable due to discovery of malware on two NIST web servers.

“On Friday 8 March, a NIST firewall detected suspicious activity and took steps to block unusual traffic from reaching the internet. NIST began investigating the cause of the unusual activity and the servers were taken offline. Malware was discovered on two NIST web servers and was then traced to a software vulnerability."

The site remained offline at the time of writing.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com