USA Today site vandalized

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- USA Today's Web page was hacked Thursday night in what a spokesman for the newspaper described as a "prankish and immaturish" act.

Only seven of more than 200,000 Web pages were affected, including the home page and six pages linked to it, said Steve Anderson, spokesman for the McLean, Virginia-based Gannett newspaper.

The "hacking, or vandalism as we call it" was discovered internally at 10:50 p.m. Thursday, he said.

The Web site went down within 15 minutes and was back up by 2 a.m. Friday, he said.

The site, which went online in 1995, had never before been hacked, Anderson said.

The newspaper is investigating but has no clues to who might have done it, he added.