Millions of US military emails have been leaked thanks to a disastrous typo that has exposed highly-sensitive information – despite repeated warnings about the issue over the course of a decade.
None of the email message flow is marked as “classified” but some messages contain high-sensitive data on serving US military personnel, contractors and their families, according to the Financial Times.
This includes X-rays and medical data, identity document information, crew lists for ships, staff lists at bases, maps of installations, photos of bases, naval inspection reports, contracts and criminal complaints against personnel.
The email flow also consists of internal investigations into bullying, official travel itineraries, bookings, and tax and financial records.
But despite repeated warnings, a steady flow of email traffic continues to the .ML domain, the country identifier for Mali – simply because people are mistyping .MIL – which is the suffix to US military email addresses.
Johannes Zuurbier – a Dutch internet entrepreneur who has a contract to manage Mali’s country domain – first identified the issue almost a decade ago.
He has been collecting misdirected emails over the past six months in an attempt to convince the US to take the problem more seriously.
Zuurbier claims to have in his possession nearly 117,000 misdirected messages – almost 1,000 of which arrived last Wednesday.
The Dutch internet entrepreneur wrote in a letter to the US earlier this month: “This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US.”
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