Some of the State of Iowa’s websites were hacked from on-line locations in other countries yesterday (Wednesday). Deb Madison-Levy of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services says the F-B-I’s involved in the investigation.

She says on Wednesday, the agency’s security office detected a “vulnerability” in the state government’s computer systems. Within a few hours, the Iowa Department of Administrative Services’ technical staff became aware of “unusual behavior” according to Madison-Levy.

“Staff quickly determined that someone had taken advantage of the recently-discovered vulnerability to gain access to the server and this was the cause of the unusual behavior,” Madison-Levy says.

For example, if you tried to go to the Iowa State Highway Patrol’s website, the State Auditor’s website popped up instead. “This is an intentional attack that appeared to come from Brazil,” Madison-Levy says.

“The F-B-I has been notified of this as well.” She says experts tracked the attack to an “I.P. address” or computer location in Finland, too. According to Madison-Levy, workers have state government websites back to normal now.