Email messages from Pentagon employees have been sent to Mali for a decade.
Millions of emails intended for Pentagon employees have been inadvertently sent to Mali over the past decade, says the American CNN. The Financial Times was the first to report on the matter.
The e-mails were intended to be sent to the .mil domain owned by the US military, but due to a typo, the e-mails have been sent using the .ml domain. Mali in West Africa administers the .ml domain.
Emails sent to the wrong address reached the Dutchman To Johannes Zuurbier, whose company maintained the .ml domain. His company’s contract to maintain the domain expired last week. Zuurbier says that he already informed the US authorities in 2013.
– Yes, I was worried and I still am, Zuurbier commented to CNN.
There are still hundreds of messages a day
None of the leaked emails came from official US Department of Defense email addresses, but from personal email accounts, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh tells.
The number of e-mails sent to the wrong domain has decreased in recent years, but there are still hundreds of e-mails, Zuurbier says. Some of the messages are so-called spam messages, but some contain sensitive information.
The e-mails show, for example, the Chief of Staff of the US Army James McConville’s hotel room number from May’s trip to Indonesia.
The military government relied even more on Russia
Mali’s military government has been relying more and more on Russia recently, and soldiers from the private mercenary army Wagner have arrived in recent years to support the military government. Last month, the mercenary army had an estimated 1,000 soldiers in Mali.
At the end of June, the UN Security Council voted to end the peacekeeping operation in Mali. The MINUSMA operation ended at the request of the Malian military leadership.