A Dutch technologist says millions of emails intended for pentagon employees instead went to accounts in Mali over the last decade.
The reason, a simple typo.
The Pentagon uses e-mail accounts that end in dot-m-i-l.
Mali’s country code is very similar dot-m-l.
Johannes Zuurbier says his company was contracted to manage the West African Nation’s Domain and he has seen millions of this simple typo since 2013.
He says he alerted officials to the issue several times.
The Defense Department is aware of the issue and says it has implemented safeguards to prevent email from its servers from going to Mali.
Officials admit they can’t prevent typos coming from other servers.
So far, some sensitive information like hotel reservations for senior military officials have been misdirected.
But that information has not been used for dubious purposes like cyberattacks.
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