Unattended child sends gibberish tweet from US nuclear agency account
A string of mysterious letters sent out by the Twitter account of the government agency responsible for safeguarding America’s nuclear weapons were not nuclear launch codes but just childish gibberish.
The account was also not hacked, as some social media users initially thought after seeing the tweet “;l;;gmlxzssaw.”
As it turns out, a “very young child” inadvertently tweeted the enigmatic message after being left unattended by the account’s social media manager.
The tweet was immediately deleted within minutes.
Journalist Mikael Thalen found out the real story after he filed a Freedom of Information request to the agency.
Filed a FOIA request with U.S. Strategic Command to see if I could learn anything about their gibberish tweet yesterday.
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) March 29, 2021
Turns out their Twitter manager left his computer unattended, resulting in his "very young child" commandeering the keyboard. pic.twitter.com/KR07PCyCUM
“The command’s Twitter manager... momentarily left the command’s Twitter account open and unattended,” the response said, adding he had been working from home.
“His very young child took advantage of the situation and started playing with the keys and unfortunately, and unknowingly, posted the tweet,” it said.
“Absolutely nothing nefarious occured, ie., no hacking of our Twitter account. The post was discovered and notice to delete it occurred telephonically,” the reply further said.