Millions of highly sensitive US military emails have been sent to Mali due to a typing error. The leaked emails could pose a significant threat to the US given that Mali is a close ally of Russia.
According to a Financial Times report, the issue was first brought to light by Dutch internet entrepreneur Johannes Zuurbier who manages the domain for Mali. Zuurbier has been trying to persuade the US to take the matter seriously and has repeatedly approached senior personnel including the defence attache in Mali, senior senior adviser to the US national cyber security service and the White House.
The Financial Times report claims that Zuubier has been collecting misdirected emails since January and has collected 1,17,000 misdirected messages so far, with almost 1,000 messages collected last Wednesday.
“This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US.” Zuubier wrote in a letter to the US authorities, as per FT.
Meanwhile, senior Pentagon officials say they are aware of the issue and are taking it seriously. Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Commander Tim Gorman told Financial Times that the Department of Defence “is aware of this issue and takes all unauthorised disclosures of controlled national security information or controlled unclassified information seriously”.
He further said that it is not possible to implement technical controls preventing the use of personal email accounts for government business but necessary training and direction are being provided to DoD personnel.
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Updated: 18 Jul 2023, 09:52 AM IST
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