Typo causes Pentagon to leak sensitive emails to Mali, a known ally of Russia

WASHINGTON (TND) — A common spelling error has leaked millions of sensitive Pentagon messages to the African country of Mali which also happens to be an ally of Russia.

The Pentagon confirmed the leak Monday to Fox News and acknowledged the issue comes from the U.S. military's ".MIL" domain name used for emails is commonly mistyped as ".ML."

The exposure of sensitive information includes diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and the travel details of top officers, according to The Financial Times.

The Department of Defense is aware of this issue and takes all unauthorized disclosures of Controlled National Security Information or Controlled Unclassified Information seriously," the Pentagon said in a statement. "DoD has implemented policy, training, and technical controls to ensure that emails from the ".mil" domain are not delivered to incorrect domains. Such emails are blocked before they leave the .mil domain and the sender is notified that they must validate the email addresses of the intended recipients.

The domain issue was first reported almost a decade ago by Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch internet entrepreneur, who has been collecting misdirected emails since January in an effort to persuade the U.S. to take the issue seriously, the Financial Times reported.

So far, he has close to 117,000 misdirected messages and received almost 1,000 Wednesday.

This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US," Zuurbier said.

While Zuurbier has a contract to manage Mali's country domain, control of the .ML domain will revert Monday to Mali's government which is closely allied with Russia.

Retired American admiral, Mike Rogers, said even though the problem is not uncommon, "the question is the scale, the duration and the sensitivity of the information.”