The US State Department briefly shut down one of its websites this week after computer hackers defaced its homepage with obscenities.

"One of our sites was hacked," spokesman Richard Boucher said, adding that Wednesday's defacement of the site "involved obscenities" but did not appear to be politically motivated.

"It's not possible to surmise any intent of the intruders beyond vandalism at this point," he said, declining to elaborate on the nature of the obscenities.

Mr Boucher stressed that the cyberattack had not affected any of the State Departments internal intranet sites which contain classified or sensitive information nor had it done anything to the department's main website.

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