A typographical error has caused millions of ’emails’ addressed to Pentagon officials to be inadvertently sent to accounts in Mali in recent years, the US Department of Defense announced on Monday.
The flaw occurred when ’emails’ destined for ‘.mil’ accounts, US military account addresses, were sent to ‘.ml’ domains in Mali, a political and military ally of Russia.
The Pentagon said, in a statement released on Monday, that it is aware of what happened and that it takes all unauthorized disclosures of national security or unclassified information “seriously”, the Efe agency reported.
In that same note, it was specified that the Pentagon has applied policies, training and technical control to guarantee that the ’emails’ of the ‘.mil’ domain do not go to incorrect domains.
“While it is not possible to implement technical controls that prevent the use of personal ’email’ accounts for government business, the Department continues to provide training and guidance to staff,” he concluded.
The deputy spokesperson for the Pentagon, Sabrina Singh, specified at a press conference that none of the ’emails’ that reached the Malian accounts were sent from an official US military account.
If an ’email’ is sent by typo to a ‘.ml’ account, that message is returned, he explained.
“None of the reported ’emails’ came from a Defense Department account,” the deputy spokesman said, adding that Defense Department personnel are always urged not to use their personal accounts for official business.
One of those messages, according to CNN, contained the room numbers of the Army Chief of Staff, General James McConville, and his entourage on a trip they made to Indonesia in May.
Source: TSF
