Persons tracking Bermuda's online weather forecast on Friday got more than they bargained for.

Users of weather.bm who attempted to look at radar imagery, instead discovered a virus on the official website of the Bermuda Weather Service.

Site manager Logic Communications quickly took down the page and removed the virus. A short time later, the site was fully operational again.

"We're looking at the logs to find out how it got there," said the company's marketing vice president Paul Coleman. It is believed that the virus was placed by hackers.

One user told The Royal Gazette that they had accessed the website at around 9 a.m. and suffered the effects of the virus.

"I went to the site this morning and went to look at the detailed forecast, and then all of a sudden my machine was crawling with warnings the machine was infected, along with advertisements for spyware and pornographic-type things," said the user. "I tried a virus scan right in the middle of it, but whatever virus there was must have passed right under the radar."

According to Mr. Coleman, computers with up-to-date virus protection and current patches shouldn't have run into any problems.

Any users concerned that they may have downloaded the virus should visit www.malwarebytes.org and download a free version of their virus scanning software.