A major Montreal web-hosting company became an unwilling participant in the Middle East conflict recently when the Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah hacked into its system to host a website.

An iWeb spokesman, Sylvain Leclair, said Thursday that an anonymous e-mail tipped off the company that Hezbollah was using its server.

"We contacted the client to inform him [that we knew] the site was hosted by him. The first thing we know is he shut down the site."

Leclair said it's not unusual for someone to hack in and use the firm's servers, as iWeb is in the business of renting out its high-capacity servers to other companies.

The company provides technical support for the servers, but, Leclair said, it's not responsible for what clients host on them.

A Concordia University internet expert, Mourad Debabbi, said it's pretty easy to hack into a company's server. He said it happens quite often in Canada because a lot of companies do not have tight security.

"The documentation is available on the net, so he will spend some hours reading, then some times downloading the existing software that is even available on the internet."

Debabbi said companies should make sure that their employees who deal with the servers have better security training, and they should keep a closer eye on what information is coming and going through their servers.