NASA Twitter feed hijacked

A NASA-run Twitter account was briefly hijacked on Wednesday to distribute a lewd image.

The @NASAKepler account normally keeps 570K space enthusiasts up to date with the progress of the Kepler mission, a search for Earth-size and smaller planets in the habitable zone around nearby stars. The feed was hijacked on Wednesday to post a picture of a woman wearing red underwear.

The offending tweet has since been deleted - and the account re-secured - but not before the racy image was automatically fed up onto NASA homepage. It’s unclear who hijacked the account or how they pulled off the hack, although weak password security in one way or another is suspected. ®