MOSCOW - An enormous television screen showing a pornographic film caused a midnight traffic jam in central Moscow on Thursday as stunned motorists slammed on the brakes to gawk at the writhing naked bodies.

The owner of the advertising screen, which sits atop a main road about two km (1.2 miles) south of the Kremlin, told the state-run RIA news agency that hackers had broken into the screen’s computer system and turned on the porn.

“They were either acting out of hooliganism or were from a rival company,” Viktor Laptev, commercial director of advertising firm Panno.ru, told RIA.

A short clip showing cars slowing to a halt to look at the screen sprung up on youtube.com and internet sites on Friday across Russia, a country which banned nudity on television before the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

Authorities said they are investigating, RIA added.

(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Denis Dyomkin, editing by Paul Casciato)