I found this the other day, a branch of the US Commerce Dept lost most of it's network to a virus in January and still hasn't gotten it back:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-agency-a-loss-of-technology-has-had-down--and-upsides/2012/04/08/gIQAvpAY5S_story.html

It's somewhat interesting from the perspective that they've had to go without IT systems for this long (back to faxes, phonecalls, sticky notes, in-person interviews), but more so for the amount of time it's taken them offline?

You would allow a couple of days for in-house IT staff to try and fail to remove something, and then a week or two for external specialists to be able to get on top of it. January to April however seems rather long. Has anyone seen anything about this on any security blogs? Reddit doesn't have any additional info.

I think there was a story about it on Wired a few days back.

Assuming they've been taking proper precautions and reformatting their computers and trying to keep things sanitized between wipes, it might be someone on the inside sabotaging them.

-Chinese agents, perhaps? :o!

Or maybe they have a PwnPlug plugged in somewhere.

Don't worry, they'll find it when they replace all the power wiring with new Secure-Watt (tm) wiring. All power outlets will be encrypted with the DoD encryption systems, and require a private key to obtain power. Use the wrong key, get the wrong voltage. Unfortunately it also means they have to replace all the hardware in the building, as the power outlets only provide power at a proprietary 77hz. But that's okay, it's in the name of government security.

Just don't ask what the price is.

Geeze, how many tax dollars is all that going to cost??

Dude, he told you not to ask.

Really dude?

C'mon dudes.