The Pentagon recently revealed a startling mistake that could have wide-reaching implications for the United States.
A typo in the military’s domain name caused millions of sensitive emails and messages to be sent to an African nation allied with Russia: Mali.
This leak exposed unclassified but still sensitive information, including diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords, and travel details of high-ranking officers.
This massive security breach is concerning to the Department of Defense (DoD). They took steps to prevent this type of incident by implementing policy changes, training protocols, and technical controls.
However, they cannot stop employees from using their personal email accounts for government business. The DoD has asked its office for cyber security oversight to monitor this situation closely.
News about this potential disaster came from Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch entrepreneur responsible for managing Mali’s domain in recent years.
He told Financial Times that he had collected over 117 thousand emails from the Pentagon since January alone and many more prior to that time period.
It has been suggested that adversaries may take advantage of this risk if given access to these emails when control shifts back to Mali’s government later this week.
Adding fuel to the fire is news about Chinese hackers gaining access into US government emails through Microsoft cloud systems last week.
President Biden declared consequences will follow whoever is found responsible however, Microsoft is still investigating exactly who is behind the attack on their system as well as how far it reached into governmental communication networks.
The world has become increasingly digitalized which means we must stay vigilant at all times so our confidential data remains confidential no matter what form it takes or where it comes from.
