Hackers Break into Center for Disease Control's Web Site

Computer hackers tapped into a Web site at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week, planting a virus that has possibly infected hundreds, or maybe even thousands of computers used by people who visited the site, agency officials said.

CDC's podcast site, www.cdc.gov/podcasts, which contains audio and video on a variety of public health topics, has been taken off the agency's Web site and is expected to be down for an indeterminate amount of time.

"At this time, CDC does not have any evidence that sensitive information has been compromised in any way. However, it is possible that computers used by visitors to CDC's site may have been infected with a computer virus," the agency said in a news item posted Saturday evening at www.cdc.gov.

"Users that visited the site Thursday morning should ensure their computer has been scanned for viruses."

The Atlanta-based government agency became aware on Thursday morning that the podcast site had been hacked, the news release said.

"As a precaution, CDC has removed the Podcast site and we anticipate the site will be down for the next few days. We are working to make sure the Podcast site is safe, and we will repost it in a few days," the agency said.

"The virus entered the system Thursday morning and within just a few hours we had deactivated the site," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said. During that window of time, the CDC estimates there were "several hundred" visits to the podcasts Web site, he said. Skinner said he did not have any information Sunday about the nature of the virus.

"The investigation is ongoing, but we believe if there is going to be a problem, hopefully it will be limited in scope because of the fact we were able to detect the virus and take the site down," Skinner said.

Since CDC launched its podcasts Web site in July, the podcasts homepage has received 40,000 visits, Skinner said. Information about how many podcast subscribers and users may be affected by the site being down was unavailable Sunday.

(CNN, CDC.gov)