Millions of U.S. military emails due to a typo in a domain suffix have been redirected to the Malian government for years and could end up with Russian authorities

By: Maksim Panasovskiy | 19.07.2023, 16:25

The Financial Times told the story that on the Internet, even a single letter can make a huge difference. Because of a typo in a domain suffix, millions of US military emails are being redirected to the government of an African country with ties to russia.

Here's What We Know

All U.S. military email addresses have the ".mil" domain suffix, while ".ml" is the country identifier for Mali. Because of the typo, millions of US military emails were redirected to the Malian government. This was revealed by Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch entrepreneur who managed the African nation's domain until 17 July under a 10-year contract.

He has been trying to contact U.S. officials to tell them about the problem. Earlier this month, Johannes Zurbier, managing director of Mali Dili, wrote that there was a real risk that the situation could be exploited by US adversaries. This includes the Russian Federation, which has close ties to the Malian government.

The US Department of Defence said it was aware of the problem. At the same time, Pentagon representatives note that none of the letters mistakenly forwarded to the Malian government were secret. Most of them are spam. However, some of the letters may contain sensitive information:

  • crew lists of ships;
  • medical scans;
  • identity documents;
  • maps of military installations;
  • photographs of military bases;
  • tax records;
  • personnel complaints;
  • contracts;
  • travel itineraries of officials.

It is worth noting that emails from ".mil" to addresses in Mali are routinely blocked before they even manage to leave the ".mil" domain, and the sender of the email is required to confirm the recipients' email address. This was revealed by Tim Gorman, a spokesman for the US Department of Defence.

A similar problem was found in the Dutch army, which uses ".nl" because the letters "n" and "m" are next to each other on the keyboard. In addition, it is noted that the Malian government received almost a dozen letters from Australia that were intended for the US side and contained information about corrosion on the fifth-generation F-35A Lighting II fighter jets.

Source: Financial Times