Russian hackers jam traffic with porn video: reports
MOSCOW — Traffic jerked to a standstill as rubbernecking motorists ogled a pornographic clip posted by hackers on big-screen video billboards in Moscow, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.
The company that operates the billboards, Panno.ru, said hackers were behind a graphic sex video broadcast late Thursday night on two roadside screens along Moscow's Garden Ring Road, one of the city's busiest arteries.
"This was an attack by hackers on the computers, as a result of which one of the commercial video clips was swapped for an indecent video," Panno.ru commercial director Viktor Laptev told RIA-Novosti.
He speculated the attack could have been linked to competition on the advertising market, or simply "hooliganism."
Witnesses said traffic crawled to a halt as unbelieving motorists craned their necks to stare at the X-rated clip which ran for about 20 minutes on the oversized screens.
"Within three minutes we found it out, and within fifteen minutes the screen was shut off," the deputy head of the Moscow city advertising committee, Alexander Menchuk, was quoted as saying by Interfax.
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Drivers in the Russian capital, Moscow, were given an unexpected show courtesy of a 30-by-20 foot electronic highway billboard when an explicit pornographic video was played for nearly twenty minutes in place of the paid advertisement clips that are usually shown. The incident happened near the entrance into Serpukovskiy tunnel on Sadovoe Ring Road, about 2 kilometers south of the Kremlin.

"Within three minutes we found it out, and within fifteen minutes the screen was shut off," the deputy head of the Moscow city advertising committee, Alexander Menchuk, said in a statement to Interfax. A passerby told the Associated Press that she was "so shocked that I couldn't even shoot video or take a picture of it."

The display screen's owner, the Three Stars Advertising Agency of Panno.ru, said that computer hackers attempting to execute a practical joke were likely to blame. Viktor Laptev, commercial director for the firm said, "They were either acting out of hooliganism or were from a rival company." 

Although a city official has been quoted as telling local media that Moscow would increase security of data transmission in light of what happened, local police say they have yet to receive a single complaint about the incident, and thereby have not opened an investigation. Nudity on television is officially banned in Russia.