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 said on Monday.
The flaw occurred when ’emails’ destined to ‘.mil’ accounts, addresses 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 this Monday, that it is aware of what happened and that it takes “seriously” all unauthorized disclosures of national security or unclassified information, reported the Efe agency.
In that same note, it was specified that the Pentagon has applied policies, training and technical control to ensure that ’emails’ from the ‘.mil’ domain do not go to incorrect domains.
“Although 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.
Deputy Pentagon Spokesperson Sabrina Singh specified at a press conference that none of the ’emails’ that reached Malian accounts were sent from an official US military account.
If an ’email’ is sent by typographical error to a ‘.ml’ account, that message is returned, she detailed.
“None of the ’emails’ reported came from a Department of Defense account,” said the deputy spokesperson, adding that Department of Defense personnel are always urged not to use their personal accounts for official business.
One of those messages, as detailed by CNN, contained the room numbers of Army Chief of Staff General James McConville and his entourage on a trip they made to Indonesia in May.
