Whoops!

The Overspill, quoting from a Financial Times article:

Millions of US military emails have been misdirected to Mali through a “typo leak” that has exposed highly sensitive information, including diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and the travel details of top officers. […]

Control of the .ML domain will revert on Monday from Zuurbier to Mali’s government, which is closely allied with Russia. When Zuurbier’s 10-year management contract expires, Malian authorities will be able to gather the misdirected emails. The Malian government did not respond to requests for comment.

According to a BBC article about this posted in the wake of the FT article…

When contacted by the BBC, a spokesperson said the defence department was aware of the issue and it was being taken seriously.

They said the department had taken steps to ensure that “.mil” emails are not sent to incorrect domains, including blocking them before they leave and notifying senders that they must validate intended recipients.

In fairness to the US military, there’s only so much they can do about human error (short of moving all their email over to their secure email systems.)