The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) suffered a ransomware security breach this month that compromised sensitive law enforcement information, a spokesman said on Monday.
The Marshals Service notified the U.S. Department of Justice to the breach, and agents there began a forensic investigation, Drew Wade, chief of the Marshals Service public affairs office, told Reuters in an email.
"The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees," Wade said.
The incident took place on Feb. 17, when the service "discovered a ransomware and data exfiltration event affecting a stand-alone USMS system", after which the system was disconnected from the network, Wade said.
The USMS is a federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Justice.
(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Robert Birsel)
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