SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Sacramento and federal authorities Friday announced that a computer hacker broke into a state computer and accessed the names and Social Security numbers for all 265,000 state employees.

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Now there's concern that information could be used to steal people's identities and money.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that early last month, somebody hacked into a State Controller computer server at a data center in Rancho Cordova.

"This appears to have been going on for some time. And this was obviously identified by the State Controller's Office (pictured, below) through their data base system," said Sacramento county Sheriff Lou Blanas.

State and the FBI officials said that the hacker did obtain valuable information, but, so far, there's no sign that the information is being used to steal identities.

"I would not be overly concerned. However, I don't think it would be improper to go ahead and use these safeguards that we're going to put up on the Internet and do some double checking," said California Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick.

There are no suspects, but the FBI has tracked the hacker to a Lycos e-mail address based in Massachusetts. They said that the same person has also broken into more than 2,500 other computer systems around the world.

"This is a top priority. We'll be working with the Sacramento high-tech investigative group," said FBI spokesman Michael Mason.