Headline Roundup • July 18th, 2023
Pentagon Typo Sent Millions of US Military Emails to Mali, a Russian Ally
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Millions of U.S. military emails have been sent to Mali, a Russian ally, due to a Pentagon typo.
Key Details: The emails came from outside accounts, and were not sent from within the military, according to Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. People frequently type .ML, the country identified for Mali, by mistake, instead of the appending the military's .MIL domain.
Key Quote: "This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the U.S.," Dutch internet entrepreneur Johannes Zuurbier said in a letter to U.S. officials, according to the Financial Times (Center bias).
For Context: Zuurbier, who Mali contracted to manage its national email domain, received almost 1,000 emails one day last week, and says there are millions in the system from over the last 10 years. The Pentagon has confirmed the problem.
How the Media Covered It: Sources from left to right noted that the U.S. has accused Russia of using Mali to move weapons to Ukraine, and that Mali is a major employer of the Wagner Group.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Reuters
A typo frequently made by military officials has put millions of sensitive U.S. emails in the hands of an African country allied with Russia.
The U.S. military uses the email domain name ".MIL," which is sometimes misspelled as ".ML," the registered domain for the nation of Mali in West Africa. Emails intended to reach Pentagon officials, some containing diplomatic documents, tax returns, travel information, and other sensitive details, have mistakenly reached email accounts in Mali when the domain is misspelled, according to a report from the Financial Times.
The issue was first discovered...
David B. Gleason/Pentagon via Wikimedia Commons
A simple typo has caused millions of U.S. military emails containing extremely sensitive information to be misdirected to Mali—a close ally of Russia. The emails are being sent to Mali’s .ML domain thanks to people incorrectly typing the suffix of all American military email addresses, .MIL. Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch internet entrepreneur contracted to manage Mali’s country domain, told the Financial Times he noticed the issue nearly a decade ago and has made repeated attempts to warn U.S. authorities about it. None of the missent emails have been marked classified, but many contain highly...
(NewsNation) — A simple typo could have sent national security information as military emails were mistakenly sent to Mali, a Russian ally, and the problem has been going on for a decade.
Millions of emails were misdirected when people used the domain suffix .ml instead of .mil, which is used in all military email addresses. While the military has the .mil domain, .ml belongs to Mali, which has a Russian presence thanks to the mercenary Wagner Group, which has used the country to route supplies to Ukraine.
First reported in the Financial Times, the...
