Sohaib Athar was in the international spotlight Monday morning after he inadvertently tweeted about the early morning raid that killed Osama bin Laden and several of his associates. His on-the-ground tweets provided early details on what could turn out to be the biggest news story of the year -- even though he didn't know what was happening at the time -- and by Monday afternoon

But according to security firm Websense, curious Web surfers who visited Athar's blog, Reallyvirtual.com, early on Monday may have had scareware software silently installed on their computers. Websense Security Research Manager Patrik Runald said Athar's blog had been hacked, and that the site was attempting to install the malicious program until about 9 a.m. Pacific Time Monday.

In an e-mail interview, Athar confirmed his site had been compromised but said it happened before he sent his tweets about bin Laden. "The site was hit with malware a few days ago," he said. "Upgrading the server ... has been on my list of things to do for the last few weeks, just never got around to doing it."

"The bad guys just got lucky," Runald said. Criminals are constantly scouring the Web looking for websites running out-of-date software that can be hacked. And sites running the Word Press software, which Athar was using, are always popular targets.

at 8:10 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday. By 9:25 a.m. it had been cleaned up, he said.