Asserting their presence powerful presence, a group of online vandals have compromised the security of a server at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, the hackers just got settled with a mockery of the site’s security and did not try to hamper the coveted experiments, according to news reports in some of the leading news papers in UK.

The attacks, which appear to have compromised a server at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which runs the LHC, resulted in a server portal for one of the science teams being defaced by a group calling itself the Greek Security Team, according to an article in the UK-based Daily Telegraph. The defaced page mocked the security of the site, calling the IT staff "school kids," according to an article in the Times Online

The hackers attacked the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, or CMS, one of the four "eyes" of the facility that will be analysing the fallout of the Big Bang experiment. Scientists at CERN said they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine -- probably ALICE, the reports said.

"We don’t know who they were but there seems to be no harm done," James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, told the Times. "It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hack-able."

CERN, the largest particle collider in the world, made history this week when the giant $8-billion machine was activated and its first beam of particles completed the 27 kilometer circuit underground. The two test beams created so far have been dumped, as the technical teams calibrated and check the performance of the large experiment.

Eventually, the collider will smash two beams of particles into each other in an attempt to detect elementary particles not present since the Big Bang and gain insight into the nature of gravity.

The hackers targeted a server hosting the portal for the science team responsible for the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS) at CERN. The organization's press office did not immediately return an e-mailed request for comment.