Millions of secret military emails sent to Russia ally - due to simple typo
An embarrassing typo has led millions of US military emails to be sent to the wrong address in Mali, a Russia ally.
The sensitive Pentagon messages were sent to a company running the West-African country's internet domain.
Mali has been in a state of civil war since 2012. The Russian mercenary group Wagner have been operating in the country split between a warring south and north. ISIS also has a foothold in the country.
A UN report published earlier this year found Wagner mercenaries were responsible for the slaughter of 500 people in Moura, a village in the heart of the country.
Countless Pentagon emails were leaked (AFP via Getty Images)According to the Financial Times, many of the millions of messages leaked highly sensitive information, including diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and the travel details of top officers.
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Despite warnings, a steady flow of emails have been sent to the .ML domain as a result of people mistyping .MIL, the suffix to all US military email addresses.
.ML is the country identifier for Mali.
Experts have warned of the endemic mistake for over a decade.
Mali's elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, was toppled in August 2020 before the military led government pivoted away from Mali's western backers towards Moscow.
The problem was first identified 10 years ago by Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch internet entrepreneur contracted to manage Mali’s country domain.
Russian mercenaries boarding a helicopter in northern Mali (AP)He has been collecting the misdirected emails since January and has close to 117,000 misdirected messages. He told the FT almost 1,000 arrived on Wednesday last week alone.
In a letter he sent to the US in early July, Mr Zuurbier wrote: “This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US.”
One misdirected email included the travel itinerary of General James McConville, the US army’s chief of staff, and his delegation as they prepared for a trip to Indonesia earlier this year.
Control of the .ML domain will revert on Monday July 17 from Mr Zuurbier to Mali’s government, which is closely allied with Russia.
It will mean Malian authorities will be able to gather misdirected emails.
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Some of the emails leaked international travel plans for Major General James C. McConville (WireImage)Mr Zuurbier, managing director of Amsterdam-based Mali Dili, says he has repeatedly approached US officials about the security breach.
Mike Rogers, a retired American admiral who used to run the National Security Agency and the US Army’s Cyber Command, said: “If you have this kind of sustained access, you can generate intelligence even just from unclassified information.”
“This is not uncommon,” he added. “It’s not out of the norm that people make mistakes but the question is the scale, the duration and the sensitivity of the information.”
Mr Zuurbier noticed the leaks when he took over the country domain code in 2013. He quickly noticed requests arrive for domains such as army.ml and navy.ml, which did not exist.
Suspecting something was amiss he set up a system to catch any such correspondence but it was quickly overwhelmed.
Not wanting to get caught up in some kind of spying charges he got legal advice which he shared with his wife "just in case the black helicopters landed in my backyard”.
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