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 Defense Department said Monday.
The outage occurred when emails destined for “.mil” accounts, the address of US military accounts, were sent to “.ml” domains in Mali, a political and military ally of Russia.
The Pentagon said in a statement released Monday that it is aware of what happened and that it takes “seriously” any unauthorized disclosures of national security or unclassified information, the Efe agency reported.
That same note specified that the Pentagon has implemented policies, training, and technical control to ensure that “emails” from the “.mil” domain do not go to the wrong domains.
“While it is not possible to implement technical controls that prevent personal email accounts from being used for government affairs, the ministry continues to provide training and guidance to staff,” he concluded.
Deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh specified at a news conference that none of the emails reaching Malian accounts came from an official US military account.
If an email is sent because of a typo to an “.ml” account, that message will be returned, he said.
“None of the reported ’emails’ came from a Defense Department account,” the deputy spokesman said, adding that Defense Department personnel are always advised not to use their personal accounts for official business.
One such message, as described by CNN, contained the room numbers of Army Chief of Staff General James McConville and his entourage during a trip they took to Indonesia in May.
Source: DN
