The Illinois Student Senate Web site was jarred into shutting down on Tuesday.

However, what appeared at first to be a deliberate hacking is now being labeled a minor inconvenience by school officials and members of the Student Senate.

Sky Opila, Illinois Student Senate press secretary and former Illini Media employee, said that the issue may have arisen if someone with spyware or any other form of unwanted monitoring software tried to log in to the Web site. He also mentioned that the transgression may not have involved an actual person, but an automated spamming device from the Internet.

“There will be no need for senate action on it,” said Opila. “It’s not going to be anything that will bring the site down permanently.” He added that the issue may not be formally addressed at the Student Senate meeting that is scheduled for Wednesday night, but that it could potentially appear in an officer report.

Though the problem does not appear to have permanent implications, members of the Senate had been exploring potential updates for the Web site. While features like the iClicker function that helps members of the student senate cast and tally votes while in session, the process of exploring other add-ons will not be inhibited.

Senate representatives contacted Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services when the Web site became inoperable.

Opila added that contacting CITES when the Web site is not running is a standard procedure.

“Really, it’s just kind of an informal process,” Opila said. “But it’s necessary because the site is connected through the UIUC server.”

Michael Corn, the Privacy and Information Director at the University, said that the analysis of the incident had not been completed Tuesday evening, and there would be more information on Wednesday.

“The site had comment spam on it,” Corn said. “It’s not uncommon for Web sites to have the anonymous poster feature so when people post on the Web site, they don’t need a registered login name.”

Corn added that anonymous posting can work to the disadvantage of the Web site’s operation.

“We try to encourage people to not allow anonymous posting,” Corn said. “But even if we didn’t encourage that, once the site is up on the Internet, it’s always exposed to some stuff that could potentially be harmful.”

Opila said the issue of spyware is a consistent threat to any server, but emphasized that it is relatively minute.

“It could happen to anyone at any time,” Opila said. “But it’s a super-small problem.”