In an environment as sensitive as the one this PC was in, 'cleaning up' is simply not good enough.
They should have nuked the fucker from orbit!
Japanese space engineers have admitted one of their computers has been infected by a Trojan that may have leaked sensitive data, including system login information, to hackers. The breach also exposed blueprints stored in the attacked terminal, according to a statement by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). …
Okay, the machine started "acting up" and some support guy used his skilz to "clean it up". They did not, at that time, detect the real problem.
4+ months later, same machine, same issue. Now they figure out that sometime 5 to 6 months BEFORE this second issue occurred there was a break in.
Interesting. Sounds to me like the support guy didn't really do anything to begin with (windows restore anyone?), because if he had it would have required restoring a lot of back ups to figure out the original issue.