September 20, 2010
Written by Gregg Brekke

Visitors to the UCC's main website over the weekend of Sept. 18-19 may have received an ominous message upon loading certain pages:

The website at http://www.ucc.org/ contains elements from the site opperlant.com which appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent.

The attack was not directed at the UCC's website specifically, but at the service the UCC uses to display rotating notices and ads on its site. This service, developed by OpenX and maintained by the UCC's web staff, was accessed by hackers early Saturday morning.

According to Dan Hazard, the UCC's electronic communications manager, the hackers exploited a vulnerability which allowed them to modify the program so it would download malware (viruses, trojan horses, etc.) to users' computers.

"We have not heard of any actual successful downloads," says Hazard. "The errors were caught by Google on Saturday afternoon and caused the warning that many visitors to our site saw on their screens when they tried to access material on ucc.org."

Ad services were disabled on Saturday by UCC staff who were notified almost immediately of the problem. The issue was resolved by Sunday afternoon, returning all website functions to normal – though viewers may have continued to see the warning until Monday morning.

"We are constantly monitoring and updating the security of all the software used on our website," says Hazard. "The rapid response of our team and OpenX to correct the problem is a reassuring indicator that our monitoring and resolution procedures are working."

United Church of Christ News Service