A Dutch entrepreneur named Johannes Zuurbier has warned the Pentagon that he constantly receives emails normally intended for the US military. He is obviously not supposed to receive these emails: they are sent to him because of a stupid typo.
Instead of typing the MIL domain name, some US military types type ML, the national domain of Mali. This makes already ten years that Mr. Zuurbier receives these messages and tries to warn (in vain) the US authorities. Some emails contained information such as directions, passport numbers, weapon production details or even passwords.
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And yet, time is running out. Mr. Zuurbier’s contract for the ML estate, which he manages, expires in a week. On this date, the Malian government will regain control, and will therefore be able to know the content of all these emails and the potential military secrets they contain. Note that Mali is considered a country under Russian influence. It would be problematic that Bamako takes control of this area.
Millions of US military emails sent to Mali because of typo
In an interview with the Financial Times, a retired Navy admiral said, “If you have that kind of sustainable access, you can generate intelligence even from unclassified information “. Note that the American soldiers are not the only ones to make typos, since Mr. Zuurbier also received emails from the Dutch army.
Indeed, the domain of the Netherlands, “NL”, differs only by one letter from the domain of Mali, “ML”. Given the urgency of the situation, a Pentagon spokesman told the Financial Times that “the Ministry of Defense is aware of this problem. […] and clarified that emails sent from a MIL address to an ML address are blocked before leaving the MIL domain and the sender is informed that they must validate the recipients’ email addresses”. It means that the leaked emails were sent from personal email clients.
Source: BBC