Millions of US military e-mails were sent to a domain in the West African country of Mali. These e-mails contained “highly sensitive” information of the US military. It is known that due to a small typo, these e-mails went to Mali’s domain instead of the proper recipient.
The West African country of Mali is known as a close ally of Russia in world politics. According to a report in the Financial Times, these mistakenly sent e-mails contained travel documents of top US military officials, tax returns, various important passwords and diplomatic documents.
According to the news published in the press, this incident happened due to the mistake of one letter in the name of the domain. The US military uses the ‘.MIL’ domain. But the e-mail is sent to the ‘.ml’ domain. That is, an ‘I’ is not written while typing the domain address. Note that the ‘.ML’ domain is used from Mali.
Some members of the US military, military-affiliated travel agents, members of intelligence agencies, private contractors, and others sent these e-mails. An e-mail sent earlier this year detailed the schedule of US Army Chief of Staff General James McConville’s visit to Indonesia.
This mistake was first noticed by Internet entrepreneur Johannes Zurbier of the Netherlands. He is involved in domain management for Mali. Johannes told the media that these incidents have been going on for decades. Despite repeated warnings, it did not stop.
Johannes started collecting these e-mails sent by mistake from last January. He said that so far he has collected 1 lakh 17 thousand e-mails. Even last Wednesday (July 12) he collected about 1000 e-mails in one day. He informed the relevant officials of the Mali government and the United States.
The US Department of Defense Pentagon has said that they are investigating the incident. In this regard, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Commander Tim Gorman said that the Ministry of Defense is aware of the incident. Keeping in mind the potential risk to national security, it is being looked into seriously.
Lt Commander Tim also said that e-mails mistakenly sent to Mali’s domain have already been blocked. Also, senders are warned that before sending e-mails, they must carefully check the address of the recipient.