Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Some of the emails reportedly contain sensitive information such as passwords and medical records.
Millions of US military emails have been mistakenly sent to Mali, a Russian ally, because of a minor typing error.
Emails intended for the US military's ".mil" domain have, for years, been sent to the west African country which ends with the ".ml" suffix.
Some of the emails reportedly contained sensitive information such as passwords, medical records and the itineraries of top officers.
That’s what we in the cybersec business call an “oopsie daisy I made a little fucky-wucky”.
For real though, this isn’t a problem yet. The TL;DR is that Mali has a top-level domain “.ml”. Just like “.co.uk” for the UK. And the military uses the domain “.mil”. So lots of emails accidentally get sent to “[Military email]@[Military email server].ml” instead of sending to .mil.
So a bad actor could simply set up an e-mail server with .ml domains that mirror the military’s .mil ones, and start collecting all of those mis-addressed emails.
So why isn’t it an issue yet? Because we had a contract with Mali to manage their domain. They literally signed administrative rights for the .ml domain over. So the US was able to basically set up their own .ml mirrored sites, to capture all of those mis-addressed emails. They have captured thousands throughout the years, because military members keep misaddressing their emails. Supposedly containing all kinds of sensitive data. Everything from medical records to troop movements and equipment inspection reports.
But that contract ends this week, so Mali could 100% start registering their own domains when that contract expires and domain registrations begin expiring.
Like what in the fuck how could anyone in charge be this stupid and careless??
I presume you've never once made a single letter typo?
Making a typo that can send to the wrong place is a common error by anyone. Net security that allows it, presumably some of them from military intranets or in various correspondences without flagging it a problem, that's a huge mistake. The solution was a patchwork to make the problem a future one, which is so government typical. Probably would have required some reprogramming in COBOL, and they couldn't find anyone.
Who are you talking about? The ICAAN? (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)?
Pretty funny to call Mali a Russian ally. That's a bit of a reach.
Given it's the military you would hope nothing actually serious was sent via email in the first place at least on a system connected to the internet. Yes personal records etc are important but they're rarely if ever national secrets.