There are just too many puns to lead with so I’ll skip them for the moment: the official Twitter account for NASA’s planet-hunting space telescope mission Kepler was hacked today and replaced with some suggestive images. The profile picture was replaced with a young woman’s face, and the pinned tweet was, well, a little more intimate.
Kepler is a floating observatory typically tasked with capturing beautiful photos of other stars’ earth-like planets. This particular image is a bit out of their usual focus.
It hit the NASA Kepler mission’s homepage too:
Of course it’s pretty clear that NASA’s account was hacked. The suggestive tweets were taken down by the time this article was published, but we captured what we could. The responses were wide-ranging:
NASA has a pretty sophisticated social media operation, but even that isn’t foolproof.
Remember to change your passwords regularly, everyone! Turn on 2-factor authentication, which adds an extra layer of security by pinging your phone with a code. And don’t click on any suspicious links.