Pentagon’s Typo Gives Russian Ally Control of Military Communications
A Typo That Could Compromise Sensitive U.S. Emails
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 for Pentagon officials, 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 a decade ago by a Dutch internet entrepreneur, Johannes Zuurbier, who has a contract to manage Mali’s domain. Zuurbier has warned the U.S. government about the problem and recently intensified his efforts as his contract comes to an end this week. After that, the information will go back to the Malian government, a close ally of the Kremlin.
“This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US,” Zuurbier said in a letter to the United States,
Zuurbier has collected over 100,000 emails since January to demonstrate the magnitude of the problem. In just one day last week, he collected almost 1,000 emails. There are millions of such emails in the system accumulated over the years.
The Pentagon has confirmed the issue and implemented controls to prevent the misdirected emails from being sent.
“The Department of Defense is aware of this issue and takes all unauthorized disclosures of Controlled National Security Information or Controlled Unclassified Information seriously,”
the Pentagon told Fox News. “DoD has implemented policy, training, and technical controls to ensure that emails from the ‘.mil’ domain are not delivered to incorrect domains. Such emails are blocked before they leave the .mil domain, and the sender is notified that they must validate the email addresses of the intended recipients.”
However, the Pentagon acknowledges that it is not possible to “implement technical controls preventing the use of personal email accounts for government business.”
Mali’s connections with U.S. adversaries could pose a problem when African officials gain access to the U.S. data. Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group has
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